LiBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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Shelf. J~l„i O 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Personal Reminiscences 



OF 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY AND OTHER 
REFORMS AND REFORMERS. 



BY y 

AARON M. POWELL. 



PUBLISHED BY 

ANNA RICE POWELL, 

PLAINFIELD, N. J. 



NEW YORK: 

Caulon Press, No. 20 Vesey Street. 



1899. 



rV/O COPIES RECEIVED. 



Library of Congress, 
OffJcs f the 

NOV 201800 

Reglftcr of Copyrightftt 






47G63 

ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1899. BY 

ANNA RICE POWELL, 

IN THE OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS, AT WASHINGTON, D. C. 



SECOND COPYi 



fQ 





^M^, cP<^-a.v.-^,^'€^ . 



2) e M c a t i It , 



TO THE 

YOUNG 

TO WHOM THE WRITER OF THESE REMINISCENCES 

HAD ALREADY DEDICATED THEM 

IN HIS HEART. 



INTRODUCTION. 



" The man is the spirit he works in; not what he 
did, but what he became." — Carlyle. 



I have been asked to write an introduction 
to this volume of reminiscences by my friend 
Aaron M. Powell, which was left unfinished 
at the time of his sudden death; and at the 
request of many friends is now placed before 
the public by loving survivors of his love. 

If the work could have been completed by 
himself no introduction by another hand would 
be in place, but as it is, perhaps one who has 
had for a few years the privilege of some 
personal intimacy with him, succeeding a 
familiarity with his career for more than forty 
years, may fitly write that which he could not 
himself have written, but which is not only 



Vll 



INTRODUCTION. 

accurate testimony to a rare and noble life, 
but part of the history of an eventful epoch 
and of a generation of historic workers, which 
with his departure may be said to be almost 
gone. 

Fifty years ago the author of this volume 
was approaching manhood at a time not 
understood, not appreciated then, but which 
proved to be a crucial time in the life of the 
nation and even an eventful period in hunian 
history. The career of African slavery under 
the flag of the American republic was — though 
it seemed far otherwise — drawing to a close. 
In the ten years preceding the civil war, it 
seemed to the world as if the power of slavery 
had so grown and strengthened that it was 
established as the ruler of the nation, the 
dictator not alone of its governmental policy 
but also of its social life ; and it even assumed 
to step between man and his Maker in its 
control of the church. But though to the 
outward eye its power seemed absolute and 
the theory of " government of the people by 
the people and for the people " a hollow sham 

viii 



INTRODUCTION. 

hastening to its end, yet such was not the 
Divine decree. In the order of Providence 
great spiritual forces were working — even 
though unseen — and the deadly calm which 
prevailed was but the precursor of that which 
may well be called the tempest of the century. 
For a quarter of a century preceding the 
war a small band of heroic men and women 
had dedicated their lives and all their powers 
to waofino^ war ao-ainst the pliant evil, at the 
sacrifice of all that seemed most precious in 
life ; for such sacrifice was required of all who 
were active in the heroic and apparently 
hopeless crusade against human slavery. The 
share in the great work of stirring the con- 
science and the brain of the nation, which 
was performed by the so called Garrisonian 
abolitionists, is not yet accurately apportioned 
by the deliberate judgment of mankind. But 
as the years roll by the perspective greatens, 
and that which was not clearly discerned by 
contempory vision, nay ! which was at the 
time denied by a time-serving, acquiescent 



INTRODUCTION. 

public opinion, seems great, even sublime — 
not only in its consecrated service, but in the 
surpassing grandeur of the results attained. 
These results followed the labors and the 
prophecies of the little band referred to with 
startling rapidity, and as the single fife and 
drum which accompanied John Brown's body 
to the grave on that bleak December day of 
'59 was the advance guard of a million of men 
in arms, so this company of true hearted men 
and women were the undoubted pioneers of a 
movement which convulsed the nation, and in 
which Slavery went down in fire and blood. 

From the present point of view, not yet 
remote enough to be accounted that of impar- 
tial history, there is a growing recognition of 
the moral greatness and the spiritual elevation 
and fervor amounting perhaps to Apostleship, 
which characterized that little band of radical 
abolitionists who, casting aside all considera- 
tions of policy and rejecting all compromises 
with evil, " cried aloud and spared not." 
Church, State, Society, were all against them — 
public opinion not only disallowed but ridi- 



INTRODUCTION. 

culed their demands, and, judged by human 
standards, it seemed quixotic for this little 
company to array its feeble forces against the 
apparently impregnable stronghold of Slavery, 
supported as it was by the wealth, respecta- 
bility and power of the nation. But again, 
and signally, was it shown that " One with 
God is a majority." 

This is not the place nor the season to 
attempt to measure the extent and value 
of their work. But the fact is admitted that 
some of the noblest men and women of the 
age, both in spiritual and intellectual endow- 
ments, gave up their lives to the cause, 
sacrificing thereto everything that seemed 
valuable of life's gfifts. 

Garrison, a man of considerable intellectual 
and of high moral endowments, with a spirit 
stern for the right as Luther's, was the leader 
and organizer ; and around him gathered a 
little band, unexcelled in human history for 
singleness of purpose and purity of life, each 
seemingly equipped for some special service 
in the great crusade. 



INTRODUCTION. 

Wendell Phillips, styled by Bryce, in his 
American Commonwealth, one of the first 
orators of the century, was naturally the orator 
of the cause, to which in his young manhood 
he had dedicated a life overflowing with 
promise ; and Whittier, the poet, and our 
own Lucretia Mott, were other leaders of 
that little company, who, to the amazement of 
their generation in their devotion to a special 
mission, worked not by the methods of man 
and eschewed all human policy. A large 
proportion of these warriors of the spirit were 
members of the peaceable Society of Friends. 
Contemporary with them, though in a sense 
following after — perhaps equalling them in 
devotion though differing in method — were 
Sumner, the statesman ; Greeley, the editor ; 
Beecher, the preacher; Curtis, the accom- 
plished scholar and ideal Christian gendeman 
— the Sir Philip Sidney of his time — and 
many others, who formed the vanguard of the 
movement which led to the formation of 
the Republican party. This larger company 
sought the same ends by what would appear 

xii 



INTRO D UC TION. 

to be more reasonable methods, in and through 
poHtical action. 

It is useless to attempt now to judge be- 
tween these differinor moral forces. Each no 
doubt had its place In the Divine economy ; 
but without assuming to anticipate the verdict 
of history, it would seem already as if the 
uncompromising Garrisonian abolitionists, who 
in the estimation of the prudent, level headed 
judgment of their day, were impolitic, imprac- 
ticable, even dangerous members of society, 
were in reality the apostles and prophets of the 
new era about to dawn upon human history, 
when man's wisest methods of policy were 
set at naught and spiritual forces prevailed in 
the giant convulsion of the age. 

Even at this writing the newspapers chron- 
icle the occasion of the re-burial — August 
30th — of the remains of John Brown's associ- 
ates by the side of their leader at North 
Elba, N. Y. 

A distinguished company gathered, and 
addresses were made by noted speakers, 
among them one by the most distinguished 



INTRODUCTION. 

Bishop of the Episcopal church ; and thirty- 
five hundred voices joined in singing 

' 'John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave, " 

and 

"Onward, Christian soldiers." 

Truly, as Lowell wrote — 

" Humanity sweeps onward." 

Aaron M. Powell was among the very 
youngest of the radical anti-slavery workers, 
havine come to manhood about ten years 
before the end. The battle for human rights 
was then being intensely waged, and the 
young man who had in his youth given up his 
cherished ambition for a college education in 
order to devote his life to the cause of the 
slave, was one of the most faithful and ener- 
getic of the younger anti-slavery workers, 
durine the decade which followed and imme- 
diately preceded the bursting of the fire, which 
had smouldered for a generation, into the flame 
of civil war, in which human slavery was con- 
sumed and a new career opened, not alone for 
the African race but for the American republic. 

xiv 



INTRODUCTION. 

While we cannot accurately indicate the 
respective proportions of the work done by 
God's servants in carrying out the Divine 
decrees, it may now be said that the Httle 
band of men and women referred to, who 
in their devotion to the high ideal of 
human liberty received only the scorn and 
obloquy of their generation, have been proven 
to be worthy of a high place in history 
among the noted reformers of all time. Most 
of them lived to witness the fruitage of their 
life's efforts and to enter the promised land of 
their desires. 

The author of this volume was still a young 
man when the great work was accomplished 
to which he had consecrated his life. Indeed 
it proved that one-half of his life had yet to be 
lived when human slavery went down in the 
shock of civil war. The baptismal fire through 
which he had passed, and the heroic compan- 
ionship of his young life had qualified him for a 
service of no common order, and for a third of 
a century afterward he lived among us, not as 
other men live, attentive to duty perhaps as 

XV 



INTRODUCTION. 

the call comes to them, yet immersed in the 
affairs of life and taking not improperly their 
share of life's good things. From the begin- 
ning to the end, his proved to be a consecrated 
life. With abilities of a high order, equipped 
for success in almost any field he might select 
of human effort, he lived a life apart from usual 
ambitions, regulating his conduct by standards 
which, though the wisdom of the world might 
account them foolishness, seem now not far 
removed from saintly, in their requirements of 
complete consecration to the service of God, 
in the service of His downtrodden and erring 
creatures. 

Worldly aims to him possessed no attrac- 
tions : his sole desire seemed to be to follow 
in the footsteps of his Master. And so the 
prime of his manhood and his declining years 
as well were devoted solely to his Master's 
work. All good causes appealed to him, but 
most of all those that being least popular stood 
most in need. The cause of the colored race, 
of the Indian, of peace, of temperance, of edu- 
cation — especially higher education in the 

xvi 



INTRODUCTION. 

Society of Friends — and above all the personal 
purity movement, which, with so many friends, 
had but few to openly champion it ; all these 
received his earnest support, and the last 
named his unquestioned leadership. 

Right in the midst of service the call came 
to him to come up higher. Sudden and sad- 
denning was the shock to his loving friends 
and to a wider circle, but the sorrow had an 
inevitable touch even of rejoicing, in the 
knowledge that he who had worked so long 
and faithfully for the Master was translated 
at once to His presence without a pang of 
suffering. 

While in one sense the unfinished state of 
these reminiscences is to be regretted, in 
another they appeal even more strongly to 
us as the interrupted speech of our friend — 
interrupted only — not ceased, for we shall 
hear his voice aeain. 



t>" 



Isaac H. Clothier. 

Harbour Entrance, Jamestown, R. I., 
September ist, 1899. 

xvii 



CONTENTS. 



I. Picture of Slave Mother. Beginning of 
Acquaintance with American Anti- 
Slavery Society. Visit from Stephen 
and Abby Kelley Foster. First 
Anti-Slavery Convention. Sojourner 
Truth. George Thompson. ... i 
II. First Anti-Slavery Service. Visit to 
Boston. First Meeting with Boston 
Abolitionists. William Lloyd Garri- 
son 25 

III. Francis Jackson, Rev. Samuel J. May. 

Mob in Syracuse. Series of Meetings 
in Western New York. Wendell 
Phillips 64 

IV. Anti-Slavery Lecturing Campaign. 

Prejudice Encountered. Sidney 
Howard Gay. Correspondence with 
Anti-Slavery Standard. Edmund 
Quincy. Meetings of Western Anti- 
Slavery Society. Joshua R. Gid- 
dings. Leader of Mob Converted to 
Body-guard. Interesting Psychic 
Incident. Travel in the "West" of 

Forty Years Ago 108 

V. Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society. 
Annual Meeting in West Chester, 
1859. James and Lucretia Mott. 

xviii 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER. PAGK. 

Thomas Garrett. Pupils of Friends' 
Central School, Philadelphia, in Mid- 
week Meeting. Edward M. Davis. 
Mary Grew, James Miller McKim. 
Robert Purvis. The Peirces of Bristol. 
Rev. William H. Furness. . , .125 
VI. Anti-Slavery Meetings on Long Island. 
Co-operation of Joseph and Mary 
Post. Arden Seaman. "Friend 
Joseph." Moses and Esther Carpen- 
ter Pierce. Hon. John Jay. Susan 
B. Anthony. Charles and Sarah 
Remond. Anti-Slavery Headquar- 
ters in Albany, N. Y. Abolitionists 
of Western New York. Conventions 
Disturbed by Mobs 15 r 

VII. John G. Whittier. Charles Sumner. 

Lydia Maria Child 178 

Memoranda of Unwritten Chapters. . . . 200 



Aaron M. Powell: Anna Canby Janney. . 204 
In Memoriam : Elizabeth Powell Bond. . 209 

To One Arisen : Isaac Roberts 261 

Aaron M. Powell As a Religious Teacher; Ed- 
ward H. Magill 262 

In Memory of Aaron Macy Powell : H. D. 

Rawnsley 269 

Not Creed, But Character: Address by Aaron 
M. Powell, at the World's Religious 
Congress in Chicago, 1893 270 

xix 



LLUSTRATIONS. 



Aaron M. Powell Frontispiece iii 

Abby Kelley Foster 5 

George Thompson 13 

William Lloyd Garrison 29 

Josephine E. Butler 55 

Rev. Samuel J. ]\Iay 65 

Wendell Phillips 75 

Lucretia Mott 127 

Joseph Carpenter 165 

John G. Whittier 179 

Charles Sumner 189 

Lydia Maria Child 195 

Aaron M. Powell ... 206 

Anna Rice Powell 207 

Aaron M. Powell and His Sister 219 



XX 



CHAPTER I. 



My attention was first called to the subject 
of slavery, in my boyhood, by an illustrated 
pamphlet, upon the first page of which was 
shown the picture of a negro slave woman, 
with her baby in her arms, who was beinor 
severely whipped by a cruel slave-driver, 
or plantation overseer, until her bared back 
was lacerated, and blood was flowing from the 
wounds. She was in a cotton field at work 
with a hoe with other slaves, negro men and 
women, and had ventured at the end of the 
row to lay down her hoe and take up her babe 
to nurse it. This interfered with her field 
work, offended the brutal overseer, and hence 
her cruel punishment. Though myself but a 
child at the time, this picture, with the inter- 
pretation of it which my mother gave to me, 
as she read from the anti -slavery pamphlet 
which had found its way into our rural home, 
in the valley of the Hudson, made a deep and 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

lasting impression upon my memory, which 
the lapse of more than half a century has not 
sufficed to efface. It gave me a vivid con- 
ception of the cruelty and injustice involved 
in the odious system of " property in man," 
ownership of men and women, created in the 
imaofe of God. 

The American Anti-Slavery Society, of 
which William Lloyd Garrison was the pio- 
neer and founder, was organized at a National 
Anti-Slavery Convention held in Philadelphia 
in 1 833, when I was but a little more than one 
year old. Through the earlier efforts of John 
Woolman, Elihu Coleman, Anthony Benezet, 
Benjamin Lundy and others, chiefly members 
of the Religious Society of Friends, a strong 
feeling against slavery had been created, and 
slavery among Friends, as a Religious Society, 
had been abolished, and the ownership of slaves 
had been made a disciplinary offense. It was 
with the enunciation of the doctrine of" imme- 
diate and unconditional emancipation, the right 
of the slave and the duty of the master," as 
voiced, with great moral emphasis and in 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

most uncompromising terms by William Lloyd 
Garrison and supported by his early coadjutors, 
that the effective modern anti-slavery move- 
ment, which culminated in the final abolition 
of slavery, may be said to have been inaugu- 
rated. 

My acquaintance with the American Anti- 
Slavery Society and its work began in 1850, 
in connection with a visit fi-om Stephen S. and 
Abby Kelley Foster, as its representatives, for 
a series of Anti- Slavery meetings at Ghent, 
Columbia County, N. Y., the home of my 
boyhood. They were guests of my father and 
mother at this time. These were the first 
meetings of the kind ever held there, and theirs 
were the first anti-slavery addresses to which 
I had ever listened. I was at once deeply 
interested in their very earnest and stirring 
appeals in behalf of the greatly wronged and 
outraged slave. I was perhaps even more pro- 
foundly impressed by their conversation upon 
the subject in our home, than by their public 
addresses, eloquent, powerful, and moving as 
they were. Just before their coming to us I 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

had been reading, with absorbed interest, the 
Journals of George Fox, the pioneer and 
founder of the ReHgious Society of Friends. 
Even so long ago as his early labors in Bar- 
badoes his preaching against slavery was so 
pronounced as to alarm the slaveholders and 
cause them to forbid the attendance of his 
meetings by the negroes. He also strongly 
opposed war, and maintained a very vigorous 
controversy with the corrupt priesthood of 
the time. Stephen S. Foster, beside being a 
most outspoken, uncompromising opponent of 
slavery, was also a non-resistant, opposed to 
all war, and a tremendous critic of compro- 
mising, pro-slavery priests and politicians. 
Fresh from the reading of Fox's Journals, it 
seemed, as I listened to Stephen's stirring 
addresses and conversation, as though, verily, 
Georee Fox had come ao-ain ! He was deemed 
a great troubler in the pro-slavery Israel, and 
was often confronted with mob violence. Like 
Fox, he was sometimes dragged out of meet- 
ings and churches at the imminent peril of his 
life, and more than once imprisoned. He used 




Abby Kelley Foster. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

sometimes humorously to claim that he really 
had very small combativeness, but that what 
he had was very active ! Educated for the 
ministry in the Congregational Church of New 
England, he became a " come-outer," and 
consecrated himself, fearlessly and most unsel- 
fishly, to the slave's redemption. Harsh and 
formidable as he often appeared on the public 
platform, he was in private a most genial, 
gentle and lovable companion, except to 
evil-doers and their apologists, political and 
religious, to whom he was everywhere and 
always a terror. 

Abby Kelley Foster was, at the time of this 
to me very memorable visit, in the prime of 
life, a woman of marked intellectual ability, 
a gifted, eloquent speaker, with rare moral 
courage and the martyr spirit. She was of 
the New England Quaker stock, and as a 
young woman, before enlisting in the anti- 
slavery crusade was a Massachusetts teacher. 
It was at one of the historic anti-slavery 
conventions, held in 1839 in Pennsylvania 
Hall, Philadelphia, confronted with a furious 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

mob, and addressed with much difficulty and 
peril, by Angelina Grimke, Maria Weston 
Chapman of Boston, Lucretia Mott and others, 
that Abby Kelley, a delegate from Massachu- 
setts, spoke with such power for the slave, 
that she was strongly urged to enter the 
anti-slavery lecturing field, which she did 
soon after. 

It was during the prosecution of their 
anti-slavery labors, in the midst of much 
persecution, that the acquaintance between 
herself and Stephen Foster began, which 
ripened into a true and beautiful marriage. 
Theirs was a union of close sympathy and, 
on the part of each, with a large measure of 
individuality. Thoroughly familiar with the 
legal and political aspects of the subject of 
slavery, logical and argumentative beyond 
the average, few men could hold their own in 
discussion with Abby on the anti-slavery 
platform. At that time a woman's voice, 
outside of a Friends' meeting, was very rarely 
heard in public. Sarah and Angelina Grimke, 
members of the Society of Friends, natives of 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

South Carolina and reared in the midst of 
slavery, had come North to reside in Phila- 
delphia and to advocate emancipation. They 
were the real pioneers among women on the 
public anti-slavery platform. The voice of 
Lucretia Mott had also occasionally been 
heard pleading for the slave in meetings of 
the general public. Angelina Grimke, who 
became the wife of Theodore D. Weld, and 
Sarah Grimke had retired from active public 
anti-slavery service before my own connec- 
tion with the American Anti- Slavery Society. 
Though I did not know them intimately, I 
had the pleasure of making their acquaintance 
in later years, as of Mr. Weld, who was an 
able and eloquent anti-slavery advocate. I 
once visited with much interest 'the famous 
school founded by Mr. Weld at Eagleswood. 
Perth Amboy, N. J. His lovely relations 
with the young people about him were a 
delitrht to behold. The club women, who, in 
large numbers, are now so easily at the front 
on public platforms, can scarcely realize in 
full their debt of obligation to such early 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

pioneers as the Grimke sisters, Lucretia Mott 
and Abby Kelley Foster ; and later, Lucy 
Stone, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Elizabeth 
Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, for 
making possible for them their present com- 
paratively smooth and pleasant public path- 
way. 

As late even as 1850, the rather slow and 
conservative people of the Hudson River 
Valley, many of them descendants of the 
Holland-Dutch settlers, with little conception 
of equality of rights for women, were not a 
little shocked and scandalizedby Abby Kelley 
Foster's able and fearless public discussion 
and criticism of pro-slavery men and measures. 
Some of them who knew me, and my parents, 
and of the very deep interest awakened in me 
in the anti-slavery cause, expressed solicitude 
lest I was being led astray and to ruin by a 
" vile and dangerous woman ! " She was 
herself quite cognizant of the icy coldness of 
this region towards their anti-slavery efforts, 
and writing of it in a letter to the National 
Anti-Slavery Standard, dated Hudson, N. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Y., February 7, 1850, she says : "It seemed 
almost like o-oinor into the arctic circle to sow 
wheat." In Hudson their meetings were 
much disturbed, and unmerchantable eo-cs 
were thrown by the mob, several of which 
struck my uncle Aaron C. Macy, who was 
their friend, and whose name I bear. 

One legacy of this first visit of Stephen 
and Abby Foster in our home w^as the weekly 
visits of the National A nti- Slavery Standard 
and The Liberator. They were read b}^ me 
with the greatest interest, and became the 
basis of my anti-slavery education, com- 
menced with the visit of the Fosters. This 
was during the Fugitive Slave Law era, an 
acute period of the anti-slavery agitation. 

It was in 1851, in my nineteenth year, that 
I attended my first anti-slavery convention. 
This convention was arranc^ed for, under the 
auspices of the American Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety, by Stephen and Abby Foster, and was 
held in the Congregational Church, at Union 
Village, Washington County, N. Y. Beside 
the Fosters, it was attended and addressed 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

also by George Thompson of England, then 
on his second visit to the United States, and 
by Sojourner Truth, the remarkable negro 
woman, herself formerly a slave in the State 
of New York. It thus happened that, before 
I had met William Lloyd Garrison and Wen- 
dell Phillips, I was brought into contact with 
the rarely gifted British anti-slavery champ- 
ion. He came to this convention direct from 
Springfield, Mass., where he had been out- 
rageously treated by a furious pro-slavery 
mob. His face was radiant with good cheer, 
and his voice melodious and the most eloquent 
I had ever listened to. It seemed to me then 
well nigh incomprehensible how any one 
could come from such mobocratic confusion 
and uproar, attended with great risk of per- 
sonal violence, and yet bring to us so much of 
geniality and spiritual sunshine ! I have since 
attended many conventions with varying con- 
ditions, sometimes turbulent, but probably 
never one so momentous and influential as 
affecting my own life. Anxious as I was, 
with my quickened and growing interest in 




George Tho:\ipson. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

the anti-slavery movement, to share this con- 
vention, I found the way difficult, and it 
seemed as thoutrh I would be obliged to 
forego it. M}- father, who had consented to 
receive Stephen and Abby Foster in our 
home, was not at that time, as he afterwards 
became, in s)'mpathy with the anti-slavery 
cause. Though not specially active in politics, 
he was associated with the Democratic, or 
pro-slavery party, concerning which he and 
Stephen had prolonged and vigorous discus- 
sions, in which, as I listened, I could but 
feel that my father was at a great disadvant- 
agfe. After the visit and meetings were over 
and the Fosters had eone, observing how 
deeply interested I had become in the subject, 
and moved somewhat also, doubtless, by the 
counsel and suggestions of some of our preju- 
diced pro-slavery friends and acquaintances, 
he souofht to dissuade me from beinof "too 
much carried away by the Abolitionists." He 
was opposed to my going to the convention ; 
but, seeing how much my heart was set upon 
it, and with the entreaty of my mother in my 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

behalf, finally did not forbid it. It was ar- 
ranged that, going by way of Albany, I should 
pay a visit to some relatives and friends, 
members of the Society of Friends, who were 
also interested in the anti-slavery movement, 
in Saratoga, and go with them, about twenty 
miles distant, to the anti-slavery convention. 
It was during an intermission, between the 
sessions, seated in earnest conversation with 
a group of these Saratoga and Washington 
County friends, that Sojourner Truth, who 
had been standing alone by the pulpit, came 
slowly down the aisle to us, about midway in 
the church, and reaching out her long, bony 
arm, placed her big black hand on my head, 
saying as she did so, with prophetic tone, in 
her peculiar dialect, " I'se been a lookin' into 
your face, and I sees you, in the futur', 
pleadin' our cause ! " In later years, as I 
visited these friends for anti-slavery meetings 
I was frequently reminded by them of So- 
journer's prophecy. 

'Sojourner Truth, sometimes called the 
" Lybian Sibyl," was born in Ulster County, 

i6 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

New York, in 1787, and was a slave until 
slavery was legally abolished in the Empire 
State in 1827. Scars upon her body were in 
evidence as to the cruelty of the system of 
which she had been a victim. She was a 
woman of much native intelligence, of power- 
ful voice, with great originality of expression, 
which, combined with her peculiar dialect, a 
quaint humor, and picturesque appearance, 
made her always a welcome speaker in the 
anti-slavery meetings. Her stirring originality 
was well illustrated on one occasion which has 
been often referred to, when she was in attend- 
ance at a convention in which Frederick 
Douglass was making a speech. He had 
dwelt at length with a tone of discouragement 
upon the many difficulties and obstacles with 
which the anti-slavery movement had to 
contend, tending to create a feeling of des- 
pondency on the part of his hearers, when 
Sojourner, who was in the back part of the 
hall, interrupted him, asking in a stentorian 
tone : " Frederick, is God dead ?" It was like 
an electric shock, and instantly changed the 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

current of thought and feeling- in the conven- 
tion. The last years of her life were passed 
mainly in Battle Creek, Michigan, and an 
interesting volume chronicles many of the 
events and incidents of her remarkable career. 
George Thompson paid three visits to the 
United States. The first was in 1834, a year 
after the abolition of slavery in the British 
West India Islands, which Lord Brougham 
declared, in the House of Lords, that George 
Thompson had done more than any other 
man to achieve. The second was in 1850, 
when the Fugitive Slave Law excitement ran 
high. The third was in 1 864, the year follow- 
ing President Lincoln's historic Emancipation 
Proclamation. On the occasion of his first 
visit so violent was the pro-slavery feeling 
against him as an abolitionist and an inter- 
medling "foreigner" that he was often in 
imminent danger, and was finally obliged to 
leave the country and return to England. 
Like Mr. Garrison, he was of humble origin, 
but with a ereat natural oratorical s^ift, which 
was cultivated in a debating club, and became 

18 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

publicly known through his anti-slavery labors 
in Great Britain. He came to the front rank 
amon'T the crreat orators of his time and 
achieved an international reputation as a large 
hearted, consecrated philanthropist. Despite 
the pro-slavery hatred with which he was 
confronted on his first visit to this country, 
multitudes listened to him with eager interest, 
and his enemies were often discomfited by his 
quick repartee. In one of his meetings in 
Boston, when some riotous Southerners who 
were present cried out: " We wish we had you 
at the South. We would cut your ears off, if 
not your head!" Mr. Thompson prompdy 
replied : " Would you ? Then I should cry 
out all the louder, ' He that hath ears to hear 
let him hear !'" Rev. S. J. May, who mentions 
this incident in his " Recollectionsof the Anti- 
Slavery Conflict," says of this reply : " It was 
irresistible. I believe the Southerners them- 
selves joined in the rapturous applause." One 
of his memorable addresses at the Union Vil- 
lage Convention, where I first listened to him, 
in 1 85 1, on his second visit to the United 

19 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

States, abounded specially with humorous 
sallies and anecdote, carrying the convention, 
his pro-slavery hearers and others, enthusias- 
tically with him. It was during a recess of 
Parliament, of which Mr. Thompson had 
been elected a member, to represent the 
Tower Hamlets Constituency, London, that 
his second visit to this country was made. 
Ostensibly for a period of needed rest, it 
proved to be instead a season of great activity 
for him, so great was the demand for his 
services in that critical era of the anti-slavery 
movement. Except at Springfield, Mass., 
where, as previously noted, he was confronted 
with a disgraceful mob, he was everywhere 
welcomed with enthusiasm and delight. 

There was a singular appropriateness in the 
time chosen for his third and last visit to this 
country, following the official edict of eman- 
cipation, and at the final culmination of the 
great " irrepressible conflict," with which he 
had long been so closely linked in sympathy, 
and so conspicuously and honorably identified. 
Whereas on his first American visit thirty 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

years earlier he had been fiercely mobbed, 
hunted and driven from the country at the 
peril of his life, now he was received with dis- 
tinguished consideration by President Lincoln, 
by many Senators and Representatives in the 
halls of Congress, and by many other eminent 
citizens, official and unofficial. He was, with 
Mr. Garrison, made the nation's guest by 
Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War at 
that time, to visit Charleston, and witness the 
re-raising of the flag at Fort Sumter. It 
was my own privilege to be present on that 
historic occasion, to which I shall again refer. 
I recall vividly, as I write these lines, the 
joyous glow of Mr. Thompson's handsome 
face, as standing by the side of Mr. Garrison, 
the two anti-slavery pioneers, with Henry 
Ward Beecher and others, within the walls of 
the Fort, pulled the rope which restored the 
original flag to the place from which, at the 
beginning of the war, four years before, it had 
been hauled down at the bidding of the lead- 
ers of the slaveholders' rebellion ! 

My last interview with George Thompson, 

21 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

most pathetic, was in his own home, at Leeds, 
in England, in the autumn of 1877. I was 
returning from Geneva, Switzerland, where I 
had been attending the first International 
Congress at which was organized the Inter- 
national Federation for the Abolition of State 
Regulation of Vice. En route from London, 
and before sailing from Liverpool for New 
York, I paid a brief visit to Scotland and the 
North of England, including Leeds and York. 
At Edinburo-h I was the oruest of Elizabeth 
Pease Nichol, in her most hospitable home at 
Huntly Lodge. She was the very intimate, 
long-time friend of George Thompson, as also 
of William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell 
Phillips, and a deeply interested, sympathetic 
co-worker for many years with the American 
Anti-Slavery Society. The time at my com- 
mand was limited, but it was arranged that in 
journeying from Edinburgh to York, I should 
stop over at Leeds, for an hour with George 
Thompson. He was then, as he had been 
for a considerable period, an almost helpless 
invalid from paralysis. His vocal organs 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

were much affected and talkino- was difficult 
for him. Mrs. Nichol had written him in 
advance of my coming and when, so that he 
was expecting me. As I was shown into his 
chamber he was sitting up, but I was much 
shocked by the painful contrast as I then saw 
him, and my memory of him, in his prime, 
with his splendid physique a quarter of a 
century earlier. He also seemed confused 
and disappointed as he saw me. He was, as 
he with difficulty told me, expecting to see a 
colored man, when my name was announced. 
There was associated with the anti -slavery 
office in New York for many years a colored 
man by the name of William P. Powell, with 
whom, on his visits to the United States, he 
had become pleasantly acquainted. The men- 
tion of my name, in connection with the 
National Anti-Slavery Standard by Mrs. 
Nichol, in writing to him, had given him the 
impression that it was the colored Powell who 
was coming to see him. Presently his mem- 
ory ralhed, and he recalled incidents of the 
anti-slavery convention where we first met, 

23 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

and of our subsequent meetings in New York, 
Pliiladelphia and elsewhere. After a little 
time, as his mind reverted to the anti-slavery 
associations and experiences, a measure of 
the old time fire came back to his eye, some- 
what of his eloquence of speech returned and 
he had many questions to ask, accompanied 
by many suggestive comments, concerning 
persons and events of the familiar past. The 
hour passed quickly, and when the time came 
that I must leave he was conversing eagerly, 
and holding my hand, managed to walk with 
me to the head of the stairway, there to say 
with much emotion his farewell. He had 
been visited a few weeks previous, by William 
Lloyd Garrison, on the occasion of his last 
visit to England, and they then had their last 
meeting. He lingered till the following year, 
and October 7, 1878, passed on to the larger 
life beyond. 



24 



CHAPTER II. 



My active service in connection with the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, as a Lectur- 
ing Agent, commenced in the autumn of 1854. 
Following the visit of the Fosters and my 
first anti-slavery convention referred to in the 
previous chapter, I became a student at the 
State Normal School, at Albany, N. Y. My 
boyhood ideal was to prepare myself thorough- 
ly for teaching, and thus to earn the money 
which would enable me to have a college 
course, at Antioch College, then under the 
Presidency of Horace Mann. Horace Mann 
was at that time a conspicuous representative 
of American educational interests, and as such, 
an inspiration to many young men. He was 
also of liberal anti-slavery tendencies. It was 
during the summer vacation of 1854 that, by 
invitation, I made my first visit to Worcester, 
Mass., the home of Stephen and Abby Foster ; 
and, with them, visited Boston. It happened 

25 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

that at the time of this visit the Fosters had 
an engagement to address an anti-slaver}- 
meetingf at Stoneham, a suburb of Boston, 
and I was invited to accompany them. It 
also chanced after our arrival at Stoneham 
that Stephen was quite disabled for the time 
by a sudden illness and unable to take the 
part expected of him in the meeting. In the 
State Normal School at Albany I was a 
member of one of its Literary Societies and, 
as such, had taken part in its debates. The 
slavery question, especially the Fugitive Slave 
Law, then a burning public question, had 
claimed much of our attention. While it was 
for the most part debated in a perfunctory way 
by the young men, merely for the sake of the 
training in public speaking, in my own case it 
was quite otherwise. Choosing what was then 
the minority and unpopular side in the discus- 
sions, what I said was from deep and earnest 
conviction against the unspeakable wickedness, 
cruelty and injustice of slavery and slave hunt- 
ing. This also soon fixed my status with the 
students and professors as the " anti-slavery 

26 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

fanatic " of my class. Abby knowing of this 
experience, and the same questions being 
uppermost at the Stoneham meeting, asked 
me, in the unexpected absence of Stephen, to 
address the meetino"- Thouofh I had never 
before undertaken such a responsibiHty, and 
had much shrinking therefrom, I was, by my 
deep interest in the subject, moved to comply 
with her request. Of what I actually said I 
have no distinct remembrance at this distance 
of time. The following day we attended in 
Boston a meeting of the Executive Committee 
of the American Anti-Slavery Society, at No. 
2 1 Cornhill, for so many years the real anti- 
slavery headquarters, not alone for New 
England but for the nation. It was at this 
memorable meeting that I first met William- 
Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Francis 
Jackson, Maria Weston Chapman, Edmund 
Ouincy, Eliza Lee Follen, Charles F. Hovey, 
Rev. Samuel May, Jr., and others of that 
remarkable group of pioneer American Abo- 
litionists. In the course of the meeting I was 
introduced by Abby, with mention of my part 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

in the Stoneham meeting of the day before. 
I was very kindly welcomed, as somebody 
said, as " Abby Kelley Foster's only convert 
in the Hudson River Counties!" The re- 
quest was also made of me that, in view of 
the importance of the crisis then pending in 
the anti-slavery movement, and the great 
need of more laborers, I would suspend my 
studies at the State Normal School, tempor- 
arily, and assist, as a Lecturing Agent, in the 
work of the Abolitionists, while the crisis con- 
tinued. Alas! the "crisis" did not end until 
slavery itself was ended, and, as a conse- 
quence, I never finished my work at the State 
Normal School, and never even began, what 
I fully intended, and greatly desired, the col- 
lege course at Antioch. 

I did not at once promise to enter the 
anti-slavery lecture field as one of the Society's 
lecturing agents, but said I would consider it, 
and on my return home would see if I could 
make some appointments for meetings on my 
own account, and then if, with a little experi- 
ence, I felt that I could really be of service, 

28 




WiLLiA.M Lloyd Garrison. 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

I would undertake for a time the lecturing 
mission. 

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

Of the Executive Committee meeting which 
I have mentioned, the central figure was Wil- 
liam Lloyd Garrison. Strong and gifted as 
were the other members, each in his or her 
own way, with a marked individuality, his 
was the masterspirit of the remarkable group. 
For full details of his great career I must refer 
my young readers, for whom chiefly these 
" Reminiscences " are written, to " The Story 
of His Life," which is also, in large part, a 
history of the American anti-slavery move- 
ment, admirably presented in four large vol- 
umes, by his sons, Wendell Phillips Garrison 
and Francis Jackson Garrison. Born in New- 
buryport, Mass., in 1805, of humble parent- 
age, his educational opportunities were very 
meagre, limited mainly to a brief period at 
the Grammar School. Becoming finally an 
apprentice in the printing office of the New- 
buryport Herald, this proved to be for him 

31 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

the right place at the right time, and here he 
had a practical training, most valuable as a 
substitute for school and colleofe. He ofained 
experience in writing for the Herald, and 
subsequently established and became editor 
of the Newburyport Free Press. It was 
while editing and publishing the Free Press 
that he discovered John G. Whittier, then an 
unknown farmer's boy, at work, as such, upon 
his father's farm, a few miles distant. It was 
after he had sold the Free Press, and was at 
work as a printer in Boston, that he met 
Benjamin Lundy, editor of the Genitcs of 
Universal E mancipation, a pioneer aboli- 
tionist, of the school of John Woolman, and 
like him a member of the Society of Friends. 
For a brief period Mr. Garrison became editor 
of The National Philanthropist, a total ab- 
stinence paper; and subsequently, in 1828, of 
the Jour7ial of the Times, at Bennington, 
Vt.,a paper friendly to the re-election of John 
Quincy Adams as President, and favoring 
anti-slavery, temperance, peace and moral 
reform. It was the following year, 1829, that 

32 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Benjamin Lundy made another journey, on 
foot, from Baltimore to Bennington for a 
second interview with Mr. Garrison ; this 
time to invite him to edit the Genius of 
Universal Eyna^icipation, while he (Lundy) 
would travel and solicit subscriptions for the 
paper. This invitation was accepted, and in 
September, 1829, Mr. Garrison began his 
editorial work in Baltimore, in a co-partner- 
ship with Lundy. He had become very 
deeply interested in behalf of the enslaved, 
his treatment of the subject was more pro- 
nounced and aggressive than Lundy's, so 
that more rapidly than the latter could secure 
them, were the subscribers to the Genius 
frightened away by him. At the end of five 
months, (March 1830) the paper, and with it 
the co-partnership of Lundy and Garrison, 
had to be discontinued. The Genius of 
Ujiiversal Emancipation was subsequently- 
resumed, by Lundy, as a small monthly in 
Washinoton. 

In consequence of several editorial strict- 
ures in the Genius upon the owner and 

Z2> 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

captain of a Newburyport (Mass.) vessel, for 
carrying a cargo of slaves and thus promoting 
the domestic slave trade, Mr. Garrison was 
arrested, tried and imprisoned for libel, in a 
Baltimore jail, for a period of seven weeks. 
Through the kindness of Arthur Tappan, of 
New York, who volunteered to pay his fine, 
he was finally released from the jail. While 
in prison he was busy with his pen, and im- 
proved the opportunity to prepare three 
anti-slavery lectures. These he sought in 
vain, on leaving the jail, an opportunity to 
deliver in Baltimore. He then started North- 
ward, poor and penniless, and, stopping in 
Philadelphia, arrangements were made for 
him to deliver his lectures in the Franklin 
Institute. They were attended mainly by 
members of the Society of Friends and col- 
ored people. Among those who attended 
his lectures and gave him a kindly welcome 
were James and Lucretia Mott. En route to 
Boston he also lectured in New York, New 
Haven and Hartford, the major portion of his 
hearers being colored people. Arrived in 

34 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Boston, no church or meeting-house could be 
had in which he could lecture. In response 
to an advertisement in a Boston newspaper^ 
Julien Hall, belonging to the Abner Kneeland 
" Infidel Society," was offered for the purpose, 
and he gave therein his series of anti-slavery 
lectures, October 1830. Among those who 
listened to them were Dr. Lyman Beecher 
(the father of Henry Ward Beecher and Har- 
riet Beecher Stowe), Dr. Gannett, Rev. Samuel 
J. May and A. Bronson Alcott. Then followed 
the publication, in Boston, of The Liberator, 
at first a very small sheet, the first number of 
which appeared January i, 1831. Though 
small in size, its message to the public was so 
emphatic morally as to cause it speedily to be 
heard and felt throughout the country. North 
and South. It announced the doctrine of 
immediate, unconditional emancipation as the 
right of the slave and the duty of the master. 
Its intrepid editor declared : "I will be as 
harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as 
justice. ^•' * * I am in earnest — I will 
not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not 

35 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

retreat a single inch — and i will be heard." 
The little paper began without a subscriber ; 
its editor set the type and did the presswork, 
with the aid of a negro boy ; lived in his 
printing office, and at times subsisted upon a 
limited diet of bread and milk. It is said of 
John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, a far- 
seeing Southerner, that he remarked, on see- 
ing The Liberator, that a spark had been 
lighted in Boston, which, if not speedily ex- 
tinguished, would ultimately destroy slavery. 
The paper was denounced as incendiary ; 
legislation was proposed to prohibit its circu- 
lation in the Southern States ; the mails were 
searched for it that it might be destroyed ; 
and the Legislature of Georgia passed a bill, 
approved by the Governor, December 26, 
1 83 1, offering a reward of $5,000 for the 
apprehension and delivery of Mr. Garrison in 
that State for summary punishment. Urgent 
demands were made upon the mayor and 
other citizens of Boston for the suppression of 
The Liberator. These finally culminated, 
October 21, 1835, in the famous "Boston 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

mob " of " Gentlemen of property and stand- 
ing." Mr. Garrison was violently seized b>' 
the mob, a rope was placed about his body, 
and he was dragged through the streets. 
Finally he was rescued, and lodged in Leverett 
Street Jail for the preservation of his life. It 
was this remarkable mob that first arrested 
the attention of Wendell Phillips, then a 
young Harvard lawyer, to the anti-slavery 
movement. 

We are, as a people, yet too near the historic 
anti-slavery conflict for it to be seen generally 
in its true perspective. It was Garrison who 
made Lincoln later a possibility. His career 
is a striking modern illustration of the truth of 
the declaration : " One shall chase a thousand, 
and two put ten thousand to flight." His 
treatment of the question of slavery, so vital 
to the well-being of the nation, in the sight of 
the impartial historian of the future, will put 
to shame the much lauded statesmanship of 
the Calhouns, Clays, Websters and other 
eminent Americans of the pro-slavery era. 
Returning from my first Boston visit to my 

37 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

home, in the summer of 1854, I was able, with 
the help of two or three friends, to arrange, as 
I had promised, a series of initial anti-slavery 
meetings, in Colinnbia County, New York. 
In one of them I encountered as an opponent 
a pro-slavery young lawyer from New York. 
As was the custom in the conduct of such 
meetings I invited questions and free discus- 
sion, a somewhat hazardous experiment, 
perhaps, for a beginner. At a second meet- 
ing in the same locality I was again confronted 
by this young lawyer, this time re-enforced by 
one older than himself in experience. Rev. 
Charles Edwards Lester, who earlier had been 
an ardent abolitionist, was a delegate to the 
World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London 
in 1 840, but subsequently became a backslider 
and a reviler of the abolitionists. At my 
second meeting, Lester, who chanced to be 
sojourning in the vicinity and was brought by 
the young lawyer for the purpose, promptly 
availed himself of my general invitation and 
addressed the meeting as an opponent. He rid- 
iculed mercilessly and misrepresented utterly 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

everything I had said, and, in closing, giving 
me no opportunity for reply, asked the people 
to leave, saying, " We have been here long 
enough " ; and himself led the way out of the 
house. About half of those present followed 
him, the others remaining to hear what I would 
say. A friend asked did I know who the 
speaker was, mentioning his name. It so 
happened that, though I had never before 
seen and did not personally know Lester, I 
had just been reading of his apostacy from the 
anti-slavery ranks, and of his part in the 
London World's Anti-Slavery Convention, 
wherein, in an address, he said, pointing to 
Mr. Garrison, who was sitting in the galler}', 
" My friend in the gallery, William Lloyd 
Garrison, whom I delight to honor!" In my 
meetine he had denounced Garrison and the 
abolitionists, as most unworthy, and myself 
severely for co-operating with them. After 
turning away from the abolitionists he pub- 
lished a pro-slavery, anti-English volume 
entitled " The Glory and Shame of England." 
allied himself with the pro-slavery Democratic 

39 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

party, and, as a reward, obtained a foreign 
consular appointment. To those who re- 
mained of our iTieeting I gave some account 
of his checkered career, of which they had not 
known. A third meeting was then proposed, 
and a public request made and conveyed to 
Lester to again attend ; but when the time 
arrived his pro-slavery friends could not per- 
suade him to come, and his statements against 
Mr. Garrison and the abolitionists w^ere, by 
his refusal, largely discounted. Of this episode 
in my initial anti-slavery experience, an account 
sent to Francis Jackson, whose guest I had 
been in Boston, was published by Mr. Garri- 
son in The Liberator, with a further account 
of Lester. 

To the cold, critical, pro-slavery public, 
Mr. Garrison was severe and denunciatory. 
In private, and in the home, he was the most 
gentle, genial and lovable of men. He had 
a keen appreciation of the humorous, and 
was always ready with pleasantry and wit- 
ticism. He was greatly blessed in the com- 
panionship of Mrs. Garrison, who was a 

40 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

woman of rare qualities of mind and heart, 
and who shared with great heroism and 
fortitude the privations and perils of the 
turbulent period of his life. To all who were 
privileged to enjoy it, and they were many, 
the hospitality and delightful atmosphere of 
the Garrison home in Dix Place is a precious 
memory. 

Mr. Garrison was an all-round reformer. 
As a non-resistant, a friend of peace and the 
opponent of all war ; as an advocate, by 
precept and example, of temperance ; as a 
broad-minded liberal in religious thought ; as 
the early champion and pioneer of equal 
rights for woman in all the relations of life ; 
and in later time of the abolition of the white 
slavery of state regulation of vice and the 
maintenance of a high, equal standard of 
morals alike for both men and women, he 
was as pronounced and as uncompromising 
as for the abolition of negro slavery. He 
made most effective use of the Bible in his 
warfare against slavery. As he would read, 
from the Old Testament and New, its denun- 



41 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

ciations of oppression, and of compromise 
with iniquity, declaring, as in Isaiah, "And 
your covenant with death shall be disannulled, 
and your agreement with hell shall not stand," 
it seemed, indeed, as if, literally, a prophet of 
the olden time had returned to exhort and 
admonish a guilty slave-holding people. 

He had an abiding faith, exceptionally 
strong, in immortality and the continued 
spiritual life. I have before me as I write, 
among other letters from him, one of deep 
and tender sympathy, written on the occasion 
of the death of my youngest brother, Edwin 
Powell, in 1858, a boy of much promise, in 
which he writes : 

Boston, July 25, 1S5S. 
]Mv Dear Powell : 

I am made very sad by reading, in the last 
Standard.^ a notice of the great bereavement which 
your parents, your sister and 3'ourself have been 
called to experience, in the removal by death of 
the dear and noble boy who made your household 
so bright and full of promise. In every such case 
" 'tis the survivor dies." I take it for granted that 
the departed never have cause to lament their trans- 
lation; nor would they again return to the earth, in 

42 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

the flesh, if they could; while I am persuaded that 
our beloved ones, thus removed from our sight, are 
drawn to us by magnetic affinity, and are more or 
less frequently by our side, sharing our sorrows and 
participating in our joys. To me this conviction is 
very strengthening. 

I did not know your stricken brother, but I have 
no doubt he was a boy of uncommon promise, and 
that all that is said of him in T/ie Standard was 
justly merited . How loving and promising was my 
own little boy, Charles Follen, and how suddenly 
he was taken from me! Having had the same cup 
of bitterness put to my lips which you are now 
called upon to drink, I know how to sympathize 
with you all. Yet I am comforted by the reflection 
that you need nothing from me to convince you that 
"it is well with the lad;" that it is a natural event, 
and neither a dark nor mysterious dispensation ; that 
what is seemingly your loss will be a gain in the 
end; and that, while the heart may bleed and the 
tears of affection may fall, a sweet spirit of resig- 
nation should be dominant in the heart. * * * 

I desire to be most kindly remembered to your 
parents and sister, proffering to you all my heartfelt 
sympathies, which are fully shared by my dear wife. 
Yours, with the warmest regards, 

Wm. Lloyd Garrison. 

A. M. Powell. 

He was a delightful traveling companion, 
as I had occasion to know in attendinir with 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

him, from time to time, sundry anti-slavery 
conventions and meetings, and in sharing 
with him, with others, one or two recreative 
excursions to the Catskills. In a letter pre- 
liminary to one of these mountain excursions, 
when he would spend a day or two at our 
rural home in Ghent, he writes : 

" Nature now presents her handsomest features 
and her richest attire. Everything in your region 
must be looking very attractive : of that I hope to 
judge in a day or two. But, conceding the fact as 
settled, I must nevertheless ask, Aaron, ' Did you 
ever see the Boston Common?' And, if so, ' then 
I guess you never did see anything like that!' — of 
course, I mean precisely like it. 

"But, 'wind and weather permitting,' we will have 
a peep together from Bunker HilP at Ghent, and 
see how the scenery compares with the view from 
Bunker Hill at Charlestown." 

A congratulatory letter upon my approach- 
ing marriage, in 1861, in which he had taken 
a kindly, sympathetic interest, gives a glimpse 
of him in an aspect little known to the general 

'A high l:iill, whose owner's name was Bunker, and com- 
manding an extended, exceptionally beautiful view of the 
Hudson River Valley and of the Catskill Mountains beyond. 

44 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

public, to whom he was the critical, severe 
uncompromising reformer. He writes : 

" I congratulate you both upon your approaching- 
union, and may it prove a perennial fountain of 
happiness! It seems to have been very early dis- 
covered that ' it is not good that the man should be 
alone;' and yet, in the sequel (if the record maybe 
trusted) it turned out quite the contrary; for he lost 
Paradise in consequence of eating the forbidden 
fruit which was offered to him by Eve. Was that 
*a help meet for him?' In spite of the record, I 
agree with Milton, or whoever else said it, that 
woman is ' Heaven's last, best gift to man;' and 
with Robert Burns, personifying Nature — 

' Her 'prentice hand she tried on man, 
And then she made the lassies O!' 

* ' By the way, don't you think it was rather sneak- 
ing in Adam, after greedily taking his share of the 
apple, to whiningly plead, by way of self-exculpa- 
tion, 'The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, 
she gave me of the tree, and I did eat' ? Out upon 
him! Why didn't he tenderly say 'my wife,' in- 
stead of, coldly, 'the woman'? And why didn't 
he own up, man fashion, and say, like Andrew 
Jackson, ' I take the responsibility ' ? He deserved 
to be expelled from the Garden, anyhow. There 
are those who would make you and me, in some 
sense (no! there is no sense in it!) responsible for 
his shabby conduct at that time! They say he was 

45 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

our 'federal head' ; therefore 'in Adam's fall we 
sinned all ' . I protest against the imputation!" 

As a conscientious non-resistant and a 
lover of peace, the development of the slave- 
holder's rebellion was in many ways a trying 
experience for Mr. Garrison, as for Whittier 
and many other abolitionists opposed to war. 
But he took a philosophic view of the situa- 
tion, which is well outlined in a letter which 
I received from him not long after the firing 
upon Sumter. He wrote : 

" Technically, the war is to restore the old state 
of things — fugitive slave law, and all; practically, 
it is a geographical fight between North and 
South, and between free and slave institutions. 
Of the great body of soldiers who have enlisted at 
the North, comparatively few have any intention 
or wish to break down the slave system; but God, 
'who is above all, and greater than all, and who 

' moves in a mysterious way 

His wonders to perform,' 

is making use of them to do 'a strange and terrible 
work' in righteousness. I neither deprecate his 
justice, nor desire to see peace through compro- 
mise. I believe this state of things is hopeful, 
compared with what it was six months ago." 

46 



PERSONA L REMIXISCENCES. 

A very close personal test came to him in 
the enlistment of his eldest son, George 
Thompson Garrison, for service in the volun- 
teer army, from truly patriotic considerations, 
not sharing- his father's non-resistant views. 
He was made a Lieutenant in the 55th Mass- 
achusetts colored regiment. As the war 
advanced, and emancipation was proclaimed, 
the change of public feeling towards Mr. 
Garrison was very marked. As I have al- 
ready mentioned, in connection with the last 
visit of George Thompson to tlie United 
States, both himself and Mr. Garrison were 
made honored guests of the nation to visit 
Charleston, S. C., and witness the re-raisin^r 
of the flag at Sumter, April 14, 1865. Both 
were given distinguished consideration by 
President Lincoln and many leading public 
officials. The restoration of the stars and 
stripes at Sumter, and the simultaneous 
surrender of the Southern forces under Lee. 
to the Northern army under Grant, marked 
the culmination of the slaveholder's rebellion, 
and the end, practically, of slavery itself. 

47 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

The Sumter celebration was, indeed, a 
most memorable occasion for all who were 
privileged to share it. Of the Northern 
visitors, beside those taken South by the 
steamer Arago, as the nation's guests, in- 
cluding Mr. Garrison, George Thompson, 
Henry Ward Beecher, Rev. Dr. R. S. Storrs, 
of Brooklyn, still living, Hon. William D. 
Kelley, of Philadelphia, and others, there was 
an excursion party of one hundred and eighty- 
six, mainly from Brooklyn and New York, 
conveyed by the steamer Oceanus, chartered 
for the occasion. Of this party it was m)- 
privilege to be a member, and as a represent- 
ative of the Nezu York Tribune. It included 
the Rev. Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler, Rev. John 
W. Chadwick, Hon. Edgar Ketchum, Rev. O. 
B. Frothingham, Rev. A. P. Putnam, Joshua 
Leavitt, and others. General Stewart L. 
Woodford, then a Colonel, and chief of Major- 
General Gillmore's Staff, (and our late United 
States Minister at Madrid, at the outbreak of 
the war with Spain,) was in charge of the 
details of the celebration. The da)^ was clear 

4« 



PERSOXA L REMhXISCENCES. 

and beautiful, the several steamers, including- 
the Oceanus, conveying representatives of 
the army and navy, guests, and visitors from 
Charleston to the historic Fort Sumter, were 
gaily decorated for the occasion. Precisely 
at noon Major-General Robert Anderson 
took the same flag which four years before he 
had been compelled to lower, and, assisted by 
many others, raised it to the top of the staff 
from which it was again unfurled to the breeze 
and greeted with great enthusiasm. Henry 
Ward Beecher then gave an address, charac- 
teristic, eloquent, and spoken with deep feel- 
ing, and published in full in the reconstructed 
Charleston Couj'ier, of April 15, 1865, a 
copy of which lies before me as I write. To 
the deserted office of this journal, once a very 
zealous defender of slavery and violent advo- 
cate of secession, then in charge of Northern 
men, Mr. Garrison paid a visit after the cele- 
bration at Sum.ter, and with his own practiced 
hands set up a paragraph of Henry Ward 
Beecher's memorable address ! The following 
day an immense meeting, attended by three 

49 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

or four thousand, mainly freed men and wo- 
men, was held in the very large "Zion's 
Church," used as a place of worship by the 
colored people. It was at first intended to 
hold an out-of-doors meeting-, in Citadel 
Square, where a speakers' platform had been 
erected. A great crowd of freed people 
gathered, and jNIr. Garrison's presence be- 
cominer known, he was crreeted with wild 
enthusiasm, lifted to the shoulders of men 
who carried him triumphantl}- to the platform. 
The meeting was adjourned to the church on 
account of Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, 
— afterward Vice President — who was also to 
address it, but could not prudently speak in 
the open air. Major-General Rufus Saxton 
presided, and beside the addresses of Mr. 
Garrison and Senator Wilson, George Thomp- 
son also spoke, and all were greeted with 
unbounded enthusiasm by the eager multitude. 
Another memorable and most impressive 
incident of the Charleston experience was a 
visit by Mr. Garrison, accompanied by Senator 
Wilson, Hon. Edgar Ketchum and others, to 

5° 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

the camp of the 55th Massachusetts Regi- 
ment, located about three miles from the city, 
where Lieutenant George Thompson Garri- 
son had, with his company, a short time 
previous to our arrival at the camp, brought 
in from the deserted plantations of the 
interior twelve hundred abandoned slaves, 
" contrabands," as they were then called. 
They were a ragged, most forlorn looking 
company of greatly impoverished, ignorant 
men, women and children, a striking object 
lesson of the misery and degradation begotten 
by slavery ! The meeting and embrace of 
father and son under such circumstances, and 
with such an environment, was impressive, 
quite beyond the power of words to describe ! 
The poor creatures, ignorant as they were, 
seemed intuitively drawn to Mr. Garrison as 
their friend and deliverer. It was most pa- 
thetic to see them gather about him, and, 
approaching timidly, touch his garments. As 
a picture, photographed upon my brain more 
than thirty years ago, it is still vivid in mem- 
ory and will be indelible. It was a scene 

51 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

which some competent artist should have 
commemorated upon canvas in a great historic 
painting ! 

On the return voyage of the Oceaiius we 
learned, from a signal message given us by a 
south-bound steamer, of the assassination of 
President Lincoln ! We returned, with sor- 
row and solicitude, direct to New York, 
without stopping, as we had intended, at 
Fortress Monroe and Washington. 

With the adoption and ratification of the 
Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution 
of the United States, abolishing slavery, in 
the judgment of Mr. Garrison, the time 
had arrived to discontinue the American 
Anti-Slavery Society, and to rely upon other 
agencies for securing negro enfranchisement. 
At this juncture differences of opinion de- 
veloped between himself and Mr. Phillips. 
These were shared by others, long time 
friends of, and co-workers with, each. They 
were, essentially, differences of method rather 
than of fundamental principle. Mr. Garrison 
discontinued The Liberator, December 29, 

52 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES, 

1865. The American Anti-Slavery Society 
was continued, with Mr. PhilHps as President, 
until April 16, 1870, till the ratification of a 
Fifteenth Amendment, which secured, legally, 
the equal enfranchisement of colored men as 
citizens. Mr. Garrison, through the press and 
upon the platform, continued individually and 
independently, though in sympathetic rela- 
tions with the Republican party, faithfully to 
exert an important, helpful national influence 
in behalf of humane, just treatment for the 
colored people, and their actual, as well as 
legal, enfranchisement upon equal terms with 
the whites. 

I have myself always regretted that it had 
not been possible to continue indefinitely, in 
some form, a nucleus of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society, with its funded moral capital, 
to be, in the United States, the counterpart, 
and something more, of the British and 
Foreign Anti- Slavery Society of Great Britain. 
If only an Independent Committee of com- 
petent men and women, kept wholly distinct 
from all partisan political alliances, and thereby 

53 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

free from the suspicion of selfish party pohti- 
cal ends, its effective moral censorship of 
public men and measures, especially as involv- 
ing the rights of the colored people, would 
even now, thirty years after emancipation, be 
most valuable and timely, in view of the 
monstrous outrages to which, as in the Caro- 
linas, Louisiana and elsewhere, they have 
been, in the long interim, and yet are, sub- 
jected. 

While, as I have previously mentioned, 
Mr. Garrison was interested in, and helpful to, 
many reforms, his greatest service, apart from 
his anti-slavery career, which was pre-eminent, 
was undoubtedly to the cause of equal rights 
for women, in all the relations of life. A 
signal illustration of this quite ante-dates the 
modern woman movement, which now as- 
sumes important proportions, and, indeed, 
may be said to have had much to do with 
its inauguration. It is his part, heroic and 
unprecedented in self sacrifice, in connection 
with the World's Anti-Slavery Convention in 
London in 1840. It was a crucial time in 

54 



i' 




f 




ml^BcsLC^^- 


iSl^taJ""" - 


\ ^^^ 


^ \>^« 


s ^- ~ 




• ir^^ 






-^ 







Josephine E. Butler. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

the anti-slavery reform, of which he was the 
acknowledg-ed American leader. The dele- 
gates from this country included several 
women, Lucretia Mott and others, and when 
they reached London, though they had 
journeyed three thousand miles to attend it, 
because they were women they were not 
allowed seats in the convention. Mr. Gar- 
rison, going by a later vessel, was delayed on 
the ocean and did not arrive until after action 
had been taken by the convention refusing to 
seat, as members, the American women dele- 
gates. Upon learning of this unjust, illiberal 
action Mr. Garrison declined a seat in the 
convention, and instead sat with the rejected 
women in the gallery. He has many times 
since spoken earnestly and effectively in be- 
half of women, but this was, indeed, heroic 
action, the wide spread, far reaching influence 
of which, under the exceptional circumstances, 
no eloquence of speech could parallel. 

To Josephine E. Butler and other of our 
European co-workers for the abolition of State 
regulation of vice, which not inappropriateh- 

57 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

they designate as the " New AboHtionist 
Movement," Mr. Garrison's example as an 
American AboHtionist, as I have had occasion 
to know, has been a constant source of inspi- 
ration and strength. In 1876, when Rev. J. 
P. Gledstoneand Henry J. Wilson, M.P., visited 
this country as a deputation from the Interna- 
tional Federation, he welcomed them cordially 
to Boston, and became one of a committee of 
vigilance for that city, with Wendell Phil- 
lips, Lucy Stone and others, to resist the 
threatened encroachments of the American 
regulation propagandists. 

In May, 1877, I received from him a letter, 
written just on the eve of his sailing for his 
last visit in England, a facsimile of which is 
reproduced on the following page. 

During this last visit in England, in 1877, 
he visited Mrs. Butler at her home, and spoke 
in sundry private and public gatherings in 
Liverpool, London, Birmingham and else- 
where, greatly to the comfort and encourage- 
ment of our English "New Abolitionist" 
friends. On his retnrn to this countrv, The 



i^'^eAA/ /T^i/xJ::^ ^e^ iyZy^ yf/r. 



,^ e^^-t-Ajir />v^ :t^KA-,^Jz^ /,trr- ^yuu^ /^^c^Jis-^ 

/7 :J>L(ry^ cl^ C^ayrrcJ-tn^ • 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

New York Committee for the Prevention of 
State Regulation of Vice, now The American 
Purity Alliance, in January, 1878, gave him a 
reception in the parlors of the " Isaac T. 
Hopper Home," on which occasion he made 
an address which strongly reminded many 
who listened to it of his most eloquent, un- 
compromising anti-slavery addresses of an 
earlier period. In January of the year follow- 
ing, 1879, the year of his death, in response 
to an invitation to attend and address the 
Annual Meeting and Subscription Annivers- 
ary of our New York Committee, I received 
from him the following earnest, characteristic 
letter : 

Boston, Jan. 14, 1879. 
My Dear Friend: 

I wish it were in my power to be one of the 
company that will assemble to-morrow evening at 
the Isaac T, Hopper Home, with reference to the 
Subscription Anniversary in aid of the New York 
Committee for the Prevention of State Regulated 
Vice; but I can only send you this hastily written 
note, in which to express the deep interest I feel in 
the object sought to be accomplished, and my high 
appreciation of the efforts made so earnestly and 
untiringly by you and your estimable associates to 

60 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

that end. That constant vigilance is needed to 
prevent the adoption in this country of a system of 
licensed prostitution, similar to that which obtains 
on the other side of the Atlantic under the mask of 
a beneficent sanitary regulation, is certain; and 
that, thus far, the attempts made in various quar- 
ters to secure this profligate legislation have been 
frustrated to a large extent by the timely warnings, 
the solemn appeals, and the faithful testimonies 
scattered widely through your associated action, 
admits of no question. Hence you well deserve 
the countenance and helping hand of the truly pure 
and good in the community, that your labors may 
be continued, your means of enlightening and 
guiding public sentiment enhanced, and your mem- 
bers greatly multiplied. 

You will not fail to bear in remembrance the 
tremendous struggle that is going on in Great 
Britain between the upholders and the opponents 
of the so called "Contagious Diseases Acts," nor 
to send to the latter the strongest words of encour- 
agement; for the world has never before seen such 
a morally sublime uprising against statutory licen- 
tiousness, and for the preservation of personal 
chastity and public virtue. In some of its aspects 
it closely resembles the conflict that was so hotly 
waged in this country for the abolition of chattel 
slavery; and we know what that required of ardent 
consecration, noble self sacrifice and unfaltering 
trust in God. * * Truly yours, 

Wm. Lloyd Garrison. 

Aaron M. Powell. 

6 1 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

His death occurred in New York the fol- 
lowing May. It called forth from all parts of 
the country, many expressions of profound 
respect and esteem. 

Our New York Committee, Abby Hopper 
Gibbons in the chair, adopted the followino- : 

Resolved, That it is with deep regret and a pro- 
found consciousness of our great loss, that we 
record the death of William Lloyd Garrison ; that, 
prophetic, fearless and uncompromising as the 
champion of and deliverer of the negro slave, so 
was he foremost among his countrymen as an out- 
spoken antagonist of the enslavement of women 
and degradation of men, involved in licensed, or 
'* regulated" prostitution ; that we commend to all 
the lesson of unswerving fidelity to convictions of 
duty and the right, taught by his rare example; 
and that we hereby express to his children our 
heartfelt sympathy in their great bereavement, — 
our joy in their rich legacy of his loving and 
precious memory. 

Boston, throug-h whose streets he had been 
drag-g-ed by a furious mob, with a rope about 
his body at the peril of his life, and again 
wherein a threatening gallows had been 
erected in front of his dwelling, has since 

62 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

honored itself, in fitly honoring his memory, 
by placing a finely executed, life-like bronze 
statue of him in Commonwealth Avenue, one 
of Its most popular thoroughfares. 



63 



CHAPTER III. 



On my first journey to Western New York 
for my initial meetings as Lecturing Agent of 
the American Anti- Slavery Society, in Sep- 
tember, 1854, 1 had as my traveling companion 
from Albany to Syracuse, Francis Jackson, of 
Boston. He was en route to Syracuse to 
attend a semi-annual meeting of the American 
Anti-Slavery Society, which I also attended. 

It was Francis Jackson, one of the "solid 
men " of Boston, who, when the mob of 1835 
broke up the annual meeting of the Boston 
Female Anti-Slavery Society, and drove its 
members from their hall, opened his own house 
for their meeting, and, in most vigorous and 
uncompromising terms, publicly espoused the 
cause of the enslaved and defended the rieht 
of free speech. His home, to which I was 
most kindly welcomed on my first visit to 
Boston, as subsequently until his death, was 
64 




Rev. Samuel J. May, 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

in Hollis street, not far from Mr. Garrison's in 
Dix Place. His cordial welcome to me, with 
his fatherly interest and encouragement, is 
a most pleasant memory of my early anti- 
slavery experience. 

At the Syracuse meetings I also met Rev. 
Samuel J. May, who was one of Mr. Garrison's 
earliest coadjutors, and whom to know was to 
love. Genial and gentle, he was also morally 
heroic, and ready to brave any amount of 
opposition and persecution, of which he had 
much, for the sake of what he believed to 
be right. As an Anti- Slavery Secretary, in 
earlier years, and in his efforts in behalf of 
Prudence Crandall, a cultivated young Quaker 
woman, who was outrageously persecuted on 
account of having proposed to teach colored 
girls in her private school in Canterbury, 
Conn., — a well nigh incredible manifestation 
of the pro-slavery, negro-hating spirit of the 
time, he exhibited the highest order of manly 
heroism and moral courage. In my later 
anti-slavery labors it was my privilege not 
infrequently to attend anti-slavery meetings 

67 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

and conventions with him, and always with a 
feeling of gratitude for his delightful compan- 
ionship. 

At this Syracuse semi-annual meeting of 
1854 Mr. Garrison also was present and pre- 
sided. The secretaries appointed for the 
occasion were John C. Hanchett, of Syracuse, 
Susan B. Anthony, of Rochester, and myself; 
its Business Committee was composed of Mr. 
May, Lucy Stone, Charles Lenox Remond, 
Lydia Mott, of Albany, and Rev. Andrew T. 
Foss, of New Hampshire ; and there were also 
among the speakers, Rev. Beriah Green, 
Gerrit Smith, Frederick Douglass, William 
Wells Brown, Hon. Leonard Gibbs, and others 
less widely known as abolitionists. It was an 
inspiring meeting, especially for one just en- 
tering upon active anti-slavery service, as was 
I at that time. Held in connection with, or 
immediately following it, was also a very 
enthusiastic " Jerry Rescue " meeting, to com- 
memorate the rescue of a fugitive slave named 
Jerry, three years previous, October i, 1852, 



68 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

from the minions of the odious Fugitive Slave 
Law, by whom he had been seized in Syra- 
cuse with the purpose of returning him to 
slavery. 

It was in January, 1861, half a dozen years 
later, after the election of Lincoln, but before 
his inauguration as President of the United 
States, that I was again in S)Tacuse to attend 
an anti-slavery convention, under the auspices 
of the American Anti- Slavery Society, the 
preliminary arrangements for which had been 
made by Mr. May. The other speakers for 
this occasion were Rev. Beriah Green, Susan 
B. Anthony and Charles D. B. Mills, besides 
Mr. May and myself On going to the hall 
at the appointed time we found it filled with 
an unruly mob, convened for the purpose of 
preventing the holding of our convention. 
When Mr. May attempted to remonstrate, he 
was immediately threatened with personal 
violence by ruffians who surrounded him, 
and like violent treatment was extended to 
the late Rev. M. E. Strieby, D. D., who was 
then a Contrretrational minister in Svracuse. 

69 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

It being" found impossible to hold our conven- 
tion in the hall as advertised, a well known 
and much respected physician, Dr. R. W. 
Pease, kindly offered his house for the pur- 
pose, and a session was held therein at which 
several addresses were delivered and a series 
of appropriate resolutions adopted, which 
appeared in the newspapers of the following 
day. Some of the citizens of Syracuse, in- 
dignant at this mobocratic interference with 
free speech in their city, called a public meet- 
ing for the following day, to be held in the 
same hall, to protest against the action of the 
mob, and to test the faithfulness of the city 
authorities. Some of the anti-slavery speak- 
ers who had been denied a hearing the day 
before were invited also to speak. At this 
"free speech" citizens' meeting, Rev. Dr. 
Strieby was called to the chair. The hall 
was crowded, many "Jerry Rescuers " being 
present, determined to vindicate the right of 
free speech, and many also of the mob of the 
day previous. Dr. Strieby was listened to 
quietly during his opening address. At its 

70 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

close, as I happened to be sitting very near 
him, and was most available, he called upon 
me, as one who was to have addressed the 
convention, the day before, to speak. The 
moment I beean to address the meeting the 
mobocrats commenced to howl, and continued 
a trrcat noise. Then the chairman asked me 
to suspend, but not to resume my seat, and 
he made another appeal for free speech, 
which was quietly listened to as before. 
When he asked me again to proceed with my 
remarks the mob began immediately to howl 
vociferously. This was several times repeated, 
he being listened to quietly and I retaining 
the platform at his request, at once inter- 
rupted with much noise, until the confusion 
became very great. When, finally, the rioters 
began to press forward toward the platform, 
a group of excited "Jerry Rescuers " gathered 
in front and a collision seemed imminent. As 
one threw himself partly on the platform at 
my feet, and at the same moment, putting 
his hand in his side pocket, grasped his revolv- 
er. Dr. Strieby turned to me and said that 

71 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

he thought we had done all we reasonably 
could do to secure the object of the meeting, 
and suggested that I, and my associates of 
the anti-slavery speakers, should retire from 
the hall. We were conducted quietly and 
unobserved by a rear passage to the street, 
leaving the mob in possession as on the 
previous day. In the evening they celebra- 
ted their victory over the abolitionists by a 
parade, led by a band of music, with transpa- 
rencies bearing these inscriptions: " Freedom 
of Speech, but not Treason ;" " The Rights 
of the South must be protected;" " Abolition- 
ism no longer in Syracuse;" "The Jerry 
Rescuers played out." Two large sized 
effigies were carried in the procession, one 
of a man, the other of a woman, bearing the 
names respectively of Mr. May and Miss 
Anthony, and these, after the parade through 
some of the principal streets of the city, were 
taken to Hanover Square, and there burned 
amid shouts, hootings, profanity and shameful 
ribaldry ! 

From Syracuse I journeyed for my first 

72 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

lecture appointments to Ontario County, the 
village of Naples, and in adjoining towns, 
appointments which were kindly made for 
me by relatives and friends residing in the 
vicinity. Naples was the home of Hon. 
Myron H. Clark, who was then the Whig and 
Temperance candidate for Governor, and sub- 
sequently elected at that autumnal election. 
With the sensitiveness everywhere prevalent 
at that time on the subject of slavery, my 
meetings, even in the smaller towns and vil- 
lages, were not infrequently exciting and 
controversial. I recall one instance, in Rush- 
ford, Alleghany County, where our meeting 
beofan at seven in the evenino^ and was con- 
tinned till nearly two o'clock in the morning ! 
My statements concerning the prevalent 
ecclesiastical complicity with slavery were 
challenged by two ministers who were pres- 
ent, one Baptist, the other Methodist, who 
appeared as zealous defenders of their respec- 
tive churches. Others joined in the discussion, 
pro and con, thus prolonging the meeting till 
the early hours of the morning. The exper- 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

iences of the anti-slavery lecturer of that 
period were varied and sometimes unique in 
private contact with the people, as well as in 
meetings. The entertainment, generally in 
private homes, was of all sorts, sometimes 
very enjoyable and restful ; frequently quite 
otherwise. With the pro-slavery prejudice 
and consequent antagonism everywhere en- 
countered, with the irregular hours of sleeping 
and eating, it is, as I write at this distance of 
time, somewhat with a feeling of surprise that 
I survived it all ! 

At the conclusion of this first series of 
meetings in Ontario, Alleghany and Cattar- 
augus Counties, I visited Rochester, where I 
was very kindly welcomed as a guest ot 
relatives then residing there, and by a group 
of anti-slavery friends. The Rochester visit 
at that time was also made memorable by the 
opportunity it gave me to hear for the first 
time, on the lyceum platform, Wendell Phil- 
lips, and to meet and counsel with him 
concerning my anti-slavery work. 



74 




/i/n(^U(, ^:^'^'t^Z^:>-/^ 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

In every generation are a few great men. 
In America's group of the present century is 
Wendell Phillips. Without official position, 
always in the minority, the champion of the 
weak against the strong, he made himself 
heard and felt, in his own and in other lands, 
as few, under kindred conditions, have ever 
done. By the inherent force of brilliant intel- 
lect, of a keen sense of justice, and the rarest 
of oratorical gifts, he became a master among 
masters, a leader of leaders. 

He was born in Boston, November 29. 
181 1. His father, John Phillips, was first 
Mayor of Boston, for several years President 
of the Massachusetts Senate, a man of wealth 
and high social position, a descendant of Rev. 
George Phillips, a Puritan, and first minister 
of Watertown, Mass. Mr. Phillips' boyhood 
was spent in the Boston Latin School ; he 
entered Harvard College before he was six- 
teen, and graduated before he was twenty. 
In view of his subsequent career, it is a curious 
fact that he was a leader of the aristocratic 

77 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

party in the University, President of an ex- 
clusive Society, known as the " Gentlemen's 
Club." He used to say that to himself be- 
longed the " infamy " of having defeated the 
first proposition to organize a Temperance 
Society in Harvard College ! He was a rapid 
learner, and stood high in his class, was deeply 
interested in history and chemistry, and had 
a passion for mechanics. " If I had followed 
my own bent," he said, " I would have given 
my time to mechanics or chemistry;" — adding : 
" My mother used to say that when I became 
a lawyer, a good carpenter was spoiled !" 

Sumner and Motley were his college mates 
and lifelong friends. He graduated from the 
Cambridge Law School in 1833, and was 
admitted to the bar in 1834. In his college 
life he was partial to the Debating Club, but 
had not then become interested in the anti- 
slavery movement. He had just entered 
upon the practice of law, and it was upon 
leaving his office on the memorable afternoon 
of the Boston Mob of October 21, 1835, when 
Mr. Garrison was dragged through the streets, 

78 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

that his attention was first seriously called to 
the anti-slavery movement. He had then no 
anti-slavery interest, but v/as "indignant on the 
ground of fair play." It was his wife, he 
says, who the next year made him an aboli- 
tionist. Hejoined the American Anti-Slavery 
Society in 1836. The year following, Novem- 
ber 7, 1837, occurred the murder of Rev. 
Elijah P. Lovejoy, and the wanton destruction 
of his anti-slavery printing press by a pro- 
slavery mob at Alton, Illinois. This shocking 
outrage in the interest of slavery moved Dr. 
Channing and others to petition the Mayor 
and Aldermen of Boston for the use of Fan- 
euil Hall, the old " Cradle of Liberty," for a 
public indignation meeting. The petition was 
first refused and afterward granted. It was 
at this meeting, held December 8, 1S37, that 
Mr. Phillips made his first great speech, which 
won for him at once an acknowledged place 
in the front rank of conspicuous orators. The 
Attorney-General of Massachusetts, James T. 
Austin, had made a bitter pro-slavery speech, 
declaring Lovejoy " presumptuous and impu- 

79 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

dent," that he " died as the fool dieth," etc. 
His speech caused great excitement in the 
meeting. Mr. PhilHps, who was present but 
not intending to speak, was much stirred. 
Though young and unknown, he presently 
made himself heard above the tumult. Refer- 
ring to the Attorney-General's speech, he 
declared : 

" Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down 
principles which place the murderers of Alton 
side by side with Otis and Hancock, with 
Ouincy and Adams, I thought those pictured 
lips, [pointing to the portraits in the historic 
hall,] would have broken into voice to rebuke 
the recreant American — the slanderer of the 
dead! " 

Great applause, and counter applause 
followed, and again he said : 

" Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, 
on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans, 
and the blood of patriots, the earth should 
have yawned and swallowed him up! " Then 
followed applause, hisses, and a great outcry: 
"Take that back! " There was great confus- 

80 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

ion, and finally, resuming, Mr. Phillips, said: 
" I cannot take back my words," and pro- 
ceeded with his masterly, eloquent reply, 
declaring, " When Liberty is in danger, 
Faneuil Hall has the right, it is her duty to 
strike the key-note for the United States!" 
His speech turned the tide, and anti-slavery 
and fi"ee speech resolutions were triumphantly 
adopted. 

His eloquent advocacy was, indeed, a great 
accession for the anti-slavery reform. For 
himself was involved the sacrifice of brilliant 
professional prospects, social position, family 
and other cherished friendships — all on the 
altar of the slave ! 

His wife, Ann Greene Phillips, was a wo- 
man of rare moral discernment and ereat 
force of character. Though an invalid during 
most of their married life, she entered most 
heartily into his varied experiences of sacrifice 
and triumph, and exhorted him to continued 
and uncompromising steadfastness at what- 
ever cost. Together they attended the 
World's Anti- Slavery Convention in London 

8 1 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

in 1840, and afterward visited the Continent. 
In that Convention Mr. Phillips exhausted 
every resource within his power to secure 
the admission and proper recognition of the 
American women deletrates. The bio^oted 
conservatism of the convention was, however, 
more than a match for even his eloquent and 
resourceful advocacy. 

When in Edinburgh, Scotland, the guest 
of Elizabeth Pease Nichol, in her hospitable 
home, Huntley Lodge, I was shown a strik- 
ingly beautiful portrait of Mr. Phillips, as a 
young man, painted for Mrs. Nichol, by the 
artist, Haydon, at the time of the World's 
Anti-Slavery Convention. His features are 
also readily recognizable in the large historic 
picture, by Haydon, with many of the dele- 
gates and visitors to the convention, which 
is now in the National Gallery, London. 

Mr. Phillips, like Mr. Garrison and the abo- 
litionists in general, was often complained of 
on account of the harshness of his criticism 
and the severity of his denunciation. Asking 
" What is the denunciation with which we are 

82 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

charged ?" he answers, " It is endeavoring, in 
our faltering human speech, to declare the 
enormity of making merchandise of men, — of 
separating husband and wife, — taking the 
infant from the mother, and sellingf the dautrh- 
ter to prostitution, — of a professedly Christian 
nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every 
sixth man and woman of its population, and 
makingf it illegal for two or three to meet 
together, except a white man be present!" 

After the culmination of the ereat anti- 
slavery conflict Mr. Phillips said to a friend: 
" I never yet had, toward any man whom I 
criticised, the slio-htest unkind feeline. I 
criticised them always from a moral stand- 
point, and as sinners against a race or a 
principle." 

In a prolonged period of familiar intercourse 
I can say of him, that in private I never knew 
him to personally criticise anyone unkindly or 
harshly. 

He was pre-eminently the orator of the 
anti-slavery movement. In the rarest gifts 
and graces of oratory he was without a peer 

83 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

on either side of the Atlantic. It has been 
my privilege in England to listen to Mr. 
Gladstone, John Bright, Lord Rosebery, 
Lord Salisbury, the present Premier ; the 
Duke of Devonshire, the Unionist leader ; 
John Morley and other representative English 
public men, but in oratory Mr. Phillips was 
quite superior to either of them. Emerson 
says : " There is no true eloquence unless 
there is a man behind the speech." In Mr. 
Phillips' case true manliness, in the highest 
sense, gave a mighty impetus to his eloquent 
voice. His training, as he explained it, was 
chiefly in the school of the anti-slavery agita- 
tion, — believing what he advocated, and an 
intense desire to persuade others. 

He was most kindly and helpful with young 
people, encouraging on their part, in quiet 
ways, aspirations for useful service. Very 
grateful to me is the memor}' of his sympa- 
thetic counsel as I met him, by appointment, 
for a quiet interview, at his hotel in Rochester, 
concerning my own anti -slavery labors in 
connection with the American Anti- Slavery 

84 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Society. Among- other practical suggestions 
which he then made concerning pubHc speak- 
ing, was to cultivate the habit of writing, as a 
mental discipline. " Write something," he 
said, " every day of your life ; write, but do not 
read." He added, " write to the Anti-Slavery 
Standard'' — and in accordance with his sug- 
gestion, I began soon after, an occasional 
correspondence with that journal. Later I 
received from him a letter of counsel and 
suggestion concerning public speaking which 
I valued highly, and have treasured during 
the intervening years. It accompanied an 
interesting little volume, to which it refers, 
entitled, " Hints on Public Speaking." I 
present the letter herewith as follows ; 

Feb'y, '60. 
Dear Friend: 

I mail you to-day the little book I spoke of, with 
trembling though on this account. 

I recognize the use of preparation, full and care- 
ful, also how much we owe the slave to serve him 
the best we can ; and yet again how much the field 
has changed since I entered. Now with the press 
crowded and every rostrum, pro and con, on 

85 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

slavery, it is a hard task to interest an audience ; 
otice the feeblest voice on the right side was useful 
and potent. 

Still I remember that in the beginning we never 
thought, much less talked, whether such a one had 
made a good speech. We just obeyed an irre- 
pressible impulse, rushed into the right and struck 
the best blow we could, and never thought whether 
it was scientifically done. That hot, unconscious 
earnestness has made us what we all are. Try to 
save it and add what skill you can by study. Be 
filled with a devoted love of our cause, so full as 
to be insensible to the opinions of others; and 
except now and then, in serious wish to improve, 
discourage criticism on each other's merits and 
manner; it chills the ardor and vitiates the sacri- 
fice. 

There are good hints in this book with some 
serious errors. 

Good-by. 

Yours faithfully, 

Wendell Phillips. 

A. M. Powell. 

Mr. Phillips placed great value upon the 
Lyceum as a popular, educational force. He 
\vas himself, of course, a great favorite upon 
its platform. Even pro-slavery Lyceum 
managers made many demands upon him, 
especially for his celebrated lecture, which 

86 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

L^^ave pleasure to so many, and which he was 
so often called upon to deliver after it had 
been widely published, the "Lost Arts." He 
used sometime to write to the managers that 
he would give them his " Lost Arts," or 
" Street Life in Europe," also a great favorite 
with Lyceum patrons, for $ioo or $200, as 
the case mioht be ; but, if thev would allow 
it, he would come for an anti -slavery lecture 
free, and pay his own expenses! He would 
frequently give an extended anti-slavery pre- 
lude to his Lyceum audiences, which he 
humorously called the " portico " to his lecture ! 
His lectures abounded in humorous surprises, 
of which a good illustration, in the " Lost 
Arts," Avas his description of the ancient 
Damascus blade of flexible steel, " so fine 
that it could be put into a scabbard like a 
corkscrew, and bent every way without 
breaking — like an American politician!" 

Master as he was on the platform, he was 
never wholly free from a sensitive feeling in 
approaching it, which in others sometimes 
developes into stage fright. He once said to 

«7 



PERSONA L REMLYTSCENCES. 

me as I was walking with him in Alban)' 
from his hotel to the hall wherein a great 
lecture audience awaited his coming : " I 
never ascend the platform without a feeling 
of weakness in my knees ! " 

His own tribute to O'Connell, wherein he 
said, " Broadly considered, his eloquence has 
never been equalled in modern times, certain- 
ly not in English speech," was quite as 
appropriate to himself. 

He was much occupied in thought with 
grave topics, but he had much quiet humor, 
and in private, as those who stood near him 
well know, was a delightful companion. 

In his boyhood he conceived a strong 
prejudice against Quakers, to which he some- 
times playfully referred in conversation with 
myself and others of his anti-slavery friends 
who were associated with the Society of 
Friends. It appears that at the close of a 
summer in the family cottage at Nahant, by 
the sea, it was decided that the cottage needed 
painting in its interior, and the father said, 
"There is so and so, an honest Lynn Quaker, 

88 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

we will leave the keys with him and have 
him do the painting-, and it will be all in o-ood 
order for us when we come agfain next sum- 
men" But, unfortunately, there was some 
slip in the quality of the paint which the Lynn 
Quaker had used, and when they next opened 
their cottage the following summer all the 
chairs stuck to the floor! This experience, 
Mr. Phillips said, gave him, as a boy, a strong 
bias against the Quakers! He was present 
on one occasion at a meeting of the Chestnut 
Street Club, Boston, at which I was invited 
to read a paper on " The Lesson of Quaker- 
ism," and shared in the discussion which 
followed. Half playfully he made some criti- 
cal comments upon Friends, which were well 
understood and enjoyed by those present. 
As reported by a correspondent, and subse- 
sequently published in the Anti-Slavery 
Standard, they had a more serious look, and 
were not as readily understood, and were 
followed by many letters of earnest protest to 
Mr. Phillips from Friends in Pennsylvania 



89 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

and elsewhere, his personal friends, who were 
amone The Standard's readers ! 

He was an eloquent, influential pioneer 
advocate of equal rights for women, as well as 
of the slave's emancipation. He had cham- 
pioned the rights of women in the World's 
Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840, and in the 
controversy of that period which had resulted 
in a division among American Abolitionists. 
He was one of the speakers at the Worcester 
Woman's Rights Convention in 1 851, which 
gave a powerful impetus to the initial agita- 
tion for equality of rights, civil and political, 
for American women. In his masterly address 
on that occasion he spoke of the movement 
as "The first organized protest against the 
injustice which has brooded over the character 
and destiny of one-half of the human race." 
and as "The most magnificent reform that has 
yet been launched upon the world." One 
who was present says that the effect was very 
marked in the convention, when, at one point 
in his memorable address, he was interrupted 
with hisses, he said : " There are two kinds of 

90 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

creatures that hiss — serpents and geese " — 
and he hoped there were none of these in the 
convention ! There was no more hissing. 

Before Legislative Committees and upon 
Lyceum and other platforms, he made many 
eloquent pleas in behalf of justice for women. 
His last public address, in the Old South 
Church, Boston, was upon this theme, on the 
occasion of the unveiling of a statue commem- 
orative of Harriet Martineau. 

He was a deeply interested, influential 
advocate of the cause of Temperance, with 
which he was wont to deal as a question of 
statesmanship, involving the perpetuity of the 
Republic. He used to say : " The Tories of 
Europe look across the Atlantic and ask us to 
show them a well governed city and we cannot 
do it." He was, of course, a total abstainer, 
and the influence of his example in this par- 
ticular was on one occasion exemplified in 
connection with an informal dinner given by 
Mr. Sumner to himself and Mr. Motley on the 
occasion of the latter's return from Europe. 
Mr. Motley was accustomed to wine, as was 

91 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Mr. Sumner himself. Mr. Sumner wished to 
be equally courteous to both his guests. In 
his dilemma he conferred, with some solicitude, 
with a friend of mine as to what he should do. 
It was finally arranged that a bottle of wine 
should be placed upon the table for Mr. 
Motley and at the proper time Mr. Sumner 
would say : " Motley, help yourself to wine ;" 
he would, of course, offer none to Mr. Phillips, 
nor would he take any himself. The dinner 
passed off pleasantly, Mr. Phillips meanwhile 
being wholly unconscious of the solicitude Mr. 
Sumner had had on account of his teetotal 
principles ! 

His sympathy for the wronged and op- 
pressed extended also to the Indians, the 
Chinese and the Irish, as well as to the 
enslaved colored people. " Every American," 
he declared, referring to broken treaties, 
" ought to blush at this nation's treatment of 
the Indians." He said: " Make them citizens; 
hold them responsible to our civil law; secure 
them its protection; call home the cheats and 
cutthroats who only exasperate and abuse 

92 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

them. Do justice if you expect to receive it. 
Show them civiHzation before you expect them 
to enjoy it." 

He was a philanthropist of the widest scope. 
He had a deep interest in prison reform; was 
strongly opposed to the death penalty; was 
much stirred by the sometimes cruel treatment 
of the insane; and earnestly advocated fewer 
hours of labor, better educational advantages, 
and greater political independence, for the 
laboring classes. After his retirement from 
lecturing he was much occupied with these 
varied philanthropic and humane interests. 
In a letter received from him in this period he 
writes me: " I have done with lecturing, — am 
a man of leisure, — except that I never have a 
minute to spare." His last letter was on 
behalf of a man wrongly imprisoned in Wor- 
cester, and on the day of his death he was to 
have made an appeal for him in a Worcester 
court. 

He deprecated the modern growth of great 
corporations and the gigantic combinations of 
capital, especially as a controlling force in 

93 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

leo-islation, and, referrinor to the then masterful 
President of the Pennsylvania Railroad, was 
wont to say: "Scott, of Harrisburg, has 
1450,000,000 under his hands, and as he moves 
from San Francisco to his Eastern lunching 
place every sweep of his garments knocks 
down a Legislature !" 

He was a profound believer in agitation, 
defined by Sir Robert Peel as " the marshal- 
lino- of the conscience of a nation to mould its 
laws." Mr. Phillips said of it that it is: " The 
method that puts the school by the side of 
the ballot box. Agitation prevents rebellions, 
keeps the peace and secures progress. Mus- 
kets are the weapons of animals. Agitation 
is the atmosphere of brains." 

His last great address, the greatest of his 
life, was at the centennial anniversary of the 
Phi Beta Kappa of Harvard College in June 
1 88 1 . Harvard's most brilliant orator, he had 
been many times invited, but always hitherto 
with limitations which he declined to accept. 
On this occasion he was left wholly free. He 
chose for his theme, "The Scholar in a 

94 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Republic." He interpreted fearlessly and 
eloquently, to a very distinguished assemblage 
of scholars, the duty and responsibility of 
scholarship; arraigned its timidity; and sum- 
moned its representatives to the championship 
of liberty, justice and needed reforms. I quote 
from the conclusion of his address the following: 

" To be as good as our fathers we must be better. 
They silenced their fears and subdued their preju- 
dices, inaugurating free speech and equahty with no 
precedent on the file. Europe shouted ' Madmen, ' 
and gave us forty years for the shipwreck. With 
serene faith they persevered. Let us rise to their 
level. Crush appetite and prohibit temptation if it 
rots great cities. Intrench labor in sufficient bul- 
wark against that wealth which, without the tenfold 
strength of modern incorporation, wrecked the 
Grecian and Roman States ; and, with a sterner 
effort still, summon women into civil life as re- 
enforcement to our laboring ranks in the effort to 
make our civilization a success. 

' * Sit not, like the figure on our silver coin, looking 
ever backward." 

In a message I received from him accomp- 
anying a copy of the address soon after its 
delivery, he wrote : "I thought they might 



95 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

hiss me. But they showed their true educa- 
tion by bearing it well. Indeed I seldom 
have had such cheers, and such a warm 
reception." 

He was tenderly sympathetic, as only those 
who stood nearest him knew. On the occas- 
ion of parting with our beloved daughter, a 
lovely little girl in her fourth year, in Decem- 
ber, 1867, he wrote : 

"I know how weak all words are to comfort you 
for such a loss. Be sure our hearts go out to you 
in loving and tenderest sympathy. God give you 
all consolation and hold up your hearts. These 
dear little pets twine round our hearts so closely, it 
is such agony to part with them. But such part- 
ings wean us, as we need to be, from these scenes, 
.putting our treasures on the other side. How 
near, real and dear that world becomes after these 
transfers! 

"Tell your wife how fully we feel with her, 
sorrowing with you both in this great sorrow. But 
this dear blessing, lent for a little while, is not taken 
away — only lifted that you may more easily look up 
to it." 

Again, ten years later, February, 1877, 
following the death of my mother he wrote : 

96 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

-' Your wife writes me of your mother's death. 
We sympathize most tenderly with you. I know- 
how sad it is parting with a mother — nothing like 
it in the rest of life. Long years ago I passed 
through that experience, and the feeling of loneli- 
ness — of the loss of something to be sheltered under 

is still fresh. I wonder if other grown men feel 

this as keenly as I did at thirty. You have been so 
happy in having your parents live so far into your 
life. I cannot imagine anything sweeter than see- 
ino- one's reward in their satisfaction and whatever 
repute we gain gladden their eyes, 

"How well I remember that circle of earnest and 
thoughtful workers I used to meet at Hudson — 
trained, far sighted and devoted. One could see 
the rich soil in which your life had its roots. No 
blessing greater than such a cradle. To such death 
is only a step upward to broader fields of labor. 
When it comes in fulness of years we only sorrow 
for it for our loss. The blessing of interest, like 
ours, in great ideas seems to me to be that even death 
seems hardly a separation. * * My wife sends 
you both her tenderest love." 

Rarely beautiful was his loving devotion to 
his fondly cherished, long suffering, invalid 
wife, to the nursing of whom, in her great 
helplessness, much of his time was given dur- 
ing the last years of his life. His very earnest 
desire was that he might outlive her, and so 

97 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

be able to minister affectionately to her needs 
to the end. Near his last moments, when 
the time of parting was at hand, his last 
words were : "I am willing to die to-day as 
well as at any time — but for my poor wife — 
I had hoped I should have outlived her." 

He was a thorough Bostonian, fond of his 
native city. In an important anti-slavery 
crisis he said : 

' ' I love inexpressibly these streets of Boston over 
whose pavements my mother held up tenderly my 
baby feet, and, if God permits me time enough, I 
will make them too pure to bear the footsteps of a 
slave, " 

During my several visits to Europe, in 
meetinof with the " New Abolitionists " of the 
Old World, Mrs. Josephine Butler and others, 
I have been much impressed with the marked 
influence of his life and teaching in connec- 
tion with their great conflict with a gigantic 
iniquity. He expressed much interest in, 
and sympathy with, my second European 
visit in 1877, when I went especially to attend 
the first International Congress, held in Gen- 

98 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

eva, Switzerland, at which was organized the 
International Federation for the Abolition of 
State Regulation of Vice. With a message 
of love, of which he commissioned me to be 
the bearer to Mrs. Butler and others, he 
kindly sent to me a general " credential," 
which I found especially helpful on various 
occasions. A facsimile I present on the fol- 
lowing page. 

He gave me a special letter to Thomas 
Hughes, "Tom Brown of Rugby," then a 
member of the House of Commons, which 
was honored in a most hearty manner, and 
opened for me at the time a door of rich 
opportunity for contact with, and the study of, 
sundry representative, distinguished English 
public men, and the numerous associations, 
of greatest interest, which cluster about the 
historic Parliament Buildings. 

Mr. and Mrs. Phillips' home life was of 
exceptional simplicity and plainness. Their 
Essex Street house, which they occupied for 
so many years, until finally driven from it, 
after a long period of waiting, by the cit\' 

99 




^^^ . ^^^/^ 







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'2'^^^ ^^''' 







a-P /o ;7,_c^ c^ ?i--<j 



/i^L^o cJ ^'^ cy^.<r-i^ <r7^ 



(C^^i^-^l->~~ CX.'<^ /Lc-it.^ Oi^^^-cyr 




t^P'U'LJL^ 







y 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

authorities, for a street improvement, was 
very plain and unpretentious, and in this 
respect a surprise, especially, to foreign 
visitors. This locality, become historic, is 
now marked by a memorial tablet to Mr. 
Phillips, placed on a house, which occupies in 
part the site of his former Essex Street home, 
by the City of Boston. It bears the following 
inscription : 

"Here Wendell Phillips resided during forty 
years, devoted by him to efforts to secure the abo- 
lition of African slavery in this country. The 
charms of home, the enjoyment of wealth and 
learning, even the kindly recognition of his fel- 
low citizens, were by him accounted as naught 
compared with duty. He lived to see justice 
triumphant, freedom universal, and to receive the 
tardy praises of his former opponents. The bless- 
ings of the poor, the friendless and the oppressed 
enriched him. In Boston he was born 29 Novem- 
ber 181 1, and died 2 February, 1884. This tablet 
was erected in 1894, by order of the City Councrl 
of Boston." 

The tributes of respect at the time of his 
death were such as were rarely, if ever be- 
fore, paid to any private citizen. Flags in 



PERSONA L REMINISCEXCES. 

Boston were at half mast, at the time of the 
funeral business was largel}- suspended, and 
the streets were thronged with people as his 
body was taken from the Hollis Street Church, 
where services were held, to lie in state in 
Faneuil Hall, where he won his first great 
oratorical triumph. 

His illness had been so brief, his body not 
at all wasted, as I stood by its side with a {>^\\ 
friends, in his chamber, in Common Street, 
before its removal to the church, he looked 
as one in a pleasant, restful sleep, majestic 
and strikingly beautiful even in death. 

The church would hold but a small fraction 
of those eager to be admitted. The services, 
simple and impressive, were conducted b)- 
the Rev. Samuel Loncrfellow. of Cambrid"-e, 
assisted by Rev. Samuel May, of Leicester, 
Mass. Among those present were the Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts, deputations from both 
branches of the Legislature, the Ma)or and 
Common Council, with many distinguished 
citizens, and representatives of the anti- 
slavery, temperance, woman suffrage, prison 

104 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

and other philanthropic and reformatory or- 
ganizations with the work of which Mr. 
PhilHps had been identified. The Robert 
Shaw Veteran Association, colored, acted as 
a bodyguard, accompanying the procession, 
from the church, and at Faneuil Hall. Many 
thousands filed past the coffin for a last look 
at his face, and other thousands were awaiting 
admission, as the time arrived for closing the 
doors of the hall. 

The remains of IMr. Phillips, which were 
placed for a time in the family tomb in the 
old Granary burying ground, Boston, were 
subsequently interred in the same grave with 
those of Mrs. Phillips, whose death occurred 
in May, 1886, on a sunny hillside, com- 
manding a wide and beautiful prospect, 
in the Milton Cemetery, a few miles from 
Boston. 

Wendell Phillips lived the life of the philan- 
thropist and agitator, with no vantage ground 
of official position. There was no office, 
however desirable, he might not have had, if 
he would have consented to walk in the path- 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

way of political preferment. His was the 
higher aim. 

His eloquent memorial tribute to Mr. Gar- 
rison may also fitly be applied to himself. He 
said : 

"We lift a man to the pedestal of office and 
imagine that that distinction will write his name 
forever upon the records of his time. But the 
only distinction which lasts is that which links 
itself with some great idea, some effort of humanity 
to lift itself in essential characteristics above its 
former level — one of the great epochs, when hu- 
manity breaks a chain, frees itself from some 
ignominious bondage, leaps up to the sunlight of 
a grand deliverance." 

It was to this level of true greatness which 
Mr. Phillips himself, in a pre-eminent degree, 
attained. 

As Lowell so beautifully sa}'s of him : 

" He stood upon the world's broad threshold; wide 
The din of battle and of slaughter rose; 

He saw God stand upon the weaker side 
That sank in seeming loss before its foes; 

Many there were who made great haste and sold 
Unto the common enemy their swords; 

106 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

He scorned their gifts of fame, and power and 
gold, 

And, underneath their soft and flowery words, 
Heard the cold serpent hiss; therefore he went 

And humbly joined him to the weaker part, 
Fanatic named, and fool, yet well content 

So he could be the nearer to God's heart, 
And feel its solemn pulses sending blood 

Through all the wide-spread veins of endless 
good." 



CHAPTER IV. 



Mv first anti-slavery lecturing campaign 
included, beside the meetings already referred 
to, an extended series in Western and in 
Central New York. These were supple- 
mented by others, during the latter part of 
the winter and the spring of 1855, in Eastern 
and Northern New York, in Columbia, Sara- 
toga, Washington and Clinton Counties, and 
later still, by meetings on Long Island, and 
in Westchester and Dutchess Counties. I 
had many experiences pleasant to recall in 
memory of kindly welcomes in hospitable 
homes, of valued new friendships formed, of 
helpful co-operation in confessedly difficult, 
but most needy fields for the labor of the 
abolitionist. I had also not a little of the 
other sort, much pro-slavery, ignorant, unreas- 
oning, negro-hating prejudice to encounter, 
unscrupulous misrepresentation by pro-slavery 
politicians, and the cold shoulder from con- 

108 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

servative, timid and time-serving ministers 
and members of churches, then in guihy 
complicity with slavery, and social ostracism 
on the part of eminently "respectable" people, 
who cared much more for "Mrs. Grundy" 
than for the wrongs and suffering of the 
outraofed and defenseless slave. In Clinton 
County my coming upon the anti-slavery 
mission was announced in one of its journals, 
with capital letters, under the heading " A 
Stray Hottentot ! " 

In accordance with Wendell Phillips' sug- 
gestion to me, as a young speaker, to write 
regularly, for the mental discipline, and, from 
the anti-slavery field to write for the National 
Anti-Slavery Standard, I followed his advice, 
and began a correspondence. 

Sidney Howard Gay was then editor of The 
Standard, with Edmund Quincy as corres- 
ponding editor. Mr. Gay was of New 
England birth and Harvard training, a gifted, 
cultured writer, and a journalist of superior 
ability. He had prepared himself for the 
practice of law, and was ready for admission 

109 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

to the bar, but becoming also deeply interested 
in the anti-slavery cause, was conscientiously 
constrained to turn from the legal profession, 
on account of the pro-slavery compromises 
of the Constitution of the United States, and 
what would be involved, and for a time was 
one of the American Anti-Slavery Society's 
lecturing agents. He brought to the Anii- 
Slavery Standards high order of intelligence, 
and gave to it a literary excellence which more 
than maintained the reputation it had won, in 
this particular, under the previous editorship 
of Lydia Maria Child. It was during Mr. 
Gay's administration that Horace Greeley is 
said to have remarked of the fourth page of 
The Standard— \\.?> literary page— that it was 
"the best literary page in America." 

My first letter to the National Anti- 
Slavery Standard \N7is also my first experience 
in writing for the press. It gave in detail, 
with much too elaborate comments for cor- 
respondence, an account of my initial lecturing 
experience in Ontario, Alleghany and Cat- 
tarau^ais Counties. Nor had I the slightest 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

idea how much space it would all call for. It 
was, however, with great consideration on 
the part of the editor, printed entire, com- 
pletely filling two of The Standard' s very 
long columns. In due time it found its way 
to me in Western New York, where I was 
still lecturing. I recall vividl)- even now, 
more than forty years later, my sense of 
mortification and regret as I opened the paper 
and saw at a glance the manifestly dispropor- 
tionate length of my letter — more than twice 
too long! My next was less than half its 
length, and much more appropriate to The 
Sia7idard's space. After my second letter I 
received a message of friendly criticism and 
suggestion from Mr. Gay, which I valued 
highly, have treasured carefully, and from 
which I quote the following : 

You will have observed that your letters have 
appeared in The Standard. I hope you have been 
long enough in harness to have got a thick skin on, 
and can bear criticism. Because I am moved to 
say — with your permission — that the last letter 
was the best, and better adapted to our corres- 
pondence columns than the first. The letters of an 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

agent — if you will pardon me for making the 
suggestion — should be full of facts; of course the 
more they are of general interest the better, but 
facts rather than disquisitions, relations rather 
than reflections. It is the privilege of a letter- 
writer to be lively and discursive, critical and even 
censorious sometimes; while editors only are al- 
lowed to be solemn and dull. It is just the differ- 
ence between the Rostrum and the Pulpit. Here 
you must labor to instruct, and stand on your 
dignity; there you are expected to amuse, at the 
same time you are instructive, and may throw 
dignity to the dogs. 

I hope you will not think I take an unwarrant- 
able liberty in saying this. A lecturing agent has 
great opportunity for good letters, but they are 
apt to think that they must talk in their letters as 
they do in their lectures, whereas, as it seems to 
me, the lectures are only the opportunity through 
which they may gather material for pleasant let- 
ters — sometimes for general reading, sometimes 
for the reading specially of the people to whom 
they have been lecturing. 

I am, very truly, 

Your friend, 

S. H. Gay. 

To one as young, and needing both exper- 
ience and instruction, as was I, such a letter 
of frank and friendly counsel was most helpful 
and grateful. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Mr. Gay, in 1857, joined the editorial staff 
of the New York Tribune, and from 1862 to 
1866 he was its managing editor. It was 
from him that, in 1865, I received a com- 
mission to represent The Tribune, as a 
member of the Oceanus excursion party on 
the occasion of the reraising of the flag at 
Sumter. 

In 1867 Mr. Gay went to Chicago, where 
he was for several years managing editor of 
the Chicago Tribune. Returning again to 
New York early in the seventies, he became 
for a time manaorinof editor of the New York 
Evening Post. Beside his very successful 
career in journalism, he made valuable con- 
tributions to historical and other literature, 
among which were " A Popular History of 
the United States," and a " Life of James 
Madison." 

Edmund Ouincy, who added largely, by his 
editorial contributions and as correspondent, 
to the influence and usefulness of The 
Sla7idard, was, like Mr. Phillips, a graduate 
of Harvard University, of which his father, 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Josiah Ouincy, was a former president. He 
also was profoundly stirred by the murder of 
Lovejoy, and was moved to join the aboli- 
tionists at a time when such an accession to 
their ranks was indeed a great encouragement 
and strenofth. He was a man of fastidious 
tastes, loving a quiet life, educated as a 
lawyer, but living rather as a gentleman of 
leisure, not one who would be expected to 
join the ranks of the fanatics. He was a 
genial, efficient presiding officer, who added 
dignity, grace and a pleasant personnel to the 
sometimes tumultuous meetings of the abo- 
litionists in Boston and New York. 

It was in the autumn of 1855 that, by 
appointment, as a representative of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, I attended, 
with Stephen S. Foster and others, the annual 
meetings of the Western Anti-Slavery Soci- 
ety, at Alliance, Ohio, and of the Michigan 
Anti-Slavery Society, at Battle Creek, Mich., 
and also an extended series of anti-slavery 
meetings in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. It 
was my first experience of Western meetings 

if4 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

and travel, then more than now quite in con- 
trast, in unconventionaHty,with Eastern ways. 
West and East alike, however, felt the in- 
fluence of the heavy hand of slavery, in both 
political and religious circles. 

At the great meeting of the Western Anti- 
Slavery Society, at Alliance, Ohio, held in a 
large tent, and attended by fully five thousand 
people, I met very pleasandy Marius R. Rob- 
inson, editor of the Anti-Slavery Bugle, 
Charles S. S. and Josephine Griffing, Dr. 
Abram Brook, James Barnaby, Joel McMil- 
lain, Benjamin and J. Elizabeth Jones, Joseph 
W^alton, Secretary of the ^lichigan Anti- 
Slavery Society, and others, of our Western 
coadjutors, whom I had not previously known 
personally. There were also present at, this 
meeting from the East, beside Mr. Foster 
and myself, Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, 
and Henry C. Wright, of Boston. There were 
strong currents and counter-currents of feel- 
ino- among the people, much sensitiveness to 
the criticisms, political and religious, of the 



115 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

abolitionists, but also much sympathy with the 
strongest anti-slavery appeals. 

Beside the educational influence of the 
distinctively anti-slavery organizations, the 
anti-slavery public sentiment of Ohio, espe- 
cially of the Western Reserve, had been 
greatly quickened and strengthened by the 
pronounced and very effective anti-slavery 
teaching, in and out of Congress, by Hon. 
Joshua R. Giddings, whose home was in Jef- 
ferson, Ashtabula County. As early as 1842 
Mr. Giddings, on account of his opposition to 
slavery, was subjected to a vote of censure, at 
the instance of the incensed slaveholders of 
the House of Representatives, was denied a 
hearing by that body, resigned his seat, but 
was triumphantly returned by his Ohio con- 
stituents, and was kept in Congress, as the 
Representative of the Sixteenth Congressional 
District, for the full period of twenty years. 
His brave utterances and heroic example, 
from the vantaofe oround of the National 
House of Representatives, exerted a powerful 
anti-slavery influence throughout the country. 

116 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Differing in method, he was in spirit quite in 
unison with the most pronounced of the abo- 
Htionists. 

It was one of the specially interesting 
incidents of this, my first visit to Ohio, that 
it was, in connection with my meetings in 
Ashtabula County, my privilege to be most 
cordially welcomed in the Giddings home. 
Mr. and Mrs. Giddings were absent, and my 
hostesses were the two daughters, Maria 
Giddings, the elder, a woman of great force 
of character, closely associated with the aboli- 
tionists, 'and Laura Giddings, the younger, 
then a very lovely young woman, with many 
of the characteristics of her honored father, 
by whom she was much beloved, and who 
subsequently became the wife of Hon. George 
W. Julian, to whom I shall again refer. Her 
friendship, commencing with this visit and 
continuing till her death, was one of the 
choicest of my life. 

With Messrs. Foster and Philleo, sometimes 
attended by C. S. S. Griffing, as representing 
the Western Anti-Slavery Society, I attended 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

many meetings, under varying conditions, in 
several counties in Ohio, in Northwestern 
Pennsylvania, in Northern Indiana, and in 
Michigan. In many localities were eager, 
sympathetic listeners, in others most out- 
spoken, zealous, and sometimes violent oppon- 
ents. In one Ohio neighborhood, at West 
Unity, I remember a meeting which I attended 
alone, as the only speaker, where I encount- 
ered several people who were formerly 
Virginians, and who were much excited that 
an abolitionist should appear for a hearing in 
their midst. The meeting was convened in 
a large school house, which served also on 
occasions as a public hall for meetings. There 
was a full attendance, with rumors of dis- 
turbance from without. A door of entrance 
opened directly opposite the speaker's plat- 
form. During the progress of the meeting it 
developed that a plan had been arranged by 
the outside disturbers to have one of their 
number, a former slaveholder, inside, near 
this door, which at a triven sio^nal, he would 
suddenly throw wide open, when I was to be 

ii8 



PERSONA L REJf/NISCENCES. 

pelted with eggs, thrown from without. It 
happened, however, that this inside sentinel, 
a man who had conceived a very strong 
prejudice against abolitionists, but had never 
before heard one speak, found himself much 
interested in what I had to say, and not 
disposed to interrupt me as had been planned. 
The outsiders, armed with eggs and receiving 
no promised signal, became weary of waiting 
and sent one of their own number to throw 
open the door. Quick as a flash, however, 
it was closed by the inside watcher, who 
knew what to expect, and just in time for it 
to receive the volley of eggs intended for 
myself! He then went outside and told the 
disturbers that he had mistaken the character 
of the meeting, and that they must keep 
quiet. They offered no further disturbance 
during the meeting, but agreed that I should 
receive their eggs at its close as I should 
leave for my lodgings. In this they were 
also thwarted by the one who they supposed 
would be their leader, and who, with others 
formed a bodyguard and conducted me, safe 

119 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

from disturbance, to the house where I was 
to be entertained. 

It was while attending anti-slavery meetings 
which had been arranged for me in the 
counties of Northwestern Pennsylvania, adja- 
cent to Ohio, that I was very kindly welcomed 
to a home for entertainment, the hostess of 
which, a sensible, intelligent woman, told me 
of her experience of a few years previous in 
having apparently died — an experience which 
would be of interest to members of the 
" Society for Psychical Research." That So- 
ciety did not then exist, and I have no 
definite, exact notes of her statement, such as 
it would require, for its benefit. In substance 
it was to the effect that she had for a consid- 
erable period been a chronic invalid ; that 
she subsequently had an acute illness, during 
which she suffered much, and finally, to all 
appearance, died. Her body became cold, 
the family gathered about the death-bed had, 
with much sorrow, accepted her death as a 
reality, and the physician, who had been in 
attendance, having done all in his power, had 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

taken his departure. A friend in performing 
last offices for the body thought she detected 
warmth, the physician was hastily re-sum- 
moned and confirmed her suspicion, restora- 
atives were applied, a little later, I do not 
remember just how long, my informant re- 
turned to full, conscious possession of her 
body. But, as she told me, she had been at 
no time personally unconscious. She knew 
what had transpired, of the grief of her family 
at her supposed death, but was conscious also 
of a new life, delightful and grateful quite 
beyond her power to describe. Her relief 
from the sense of bodily pain was great, as 
was her enjoyment of the new environment. 
Finally it seemed to be made known to her 
that she might, at her option, either return 
and take full possession of her body, with 
which she still had, through the brain, a slight 
connection, or she could sever altogether the 
cord which held her to it and go on in the 
new and very attractive life. Her love for, 
and sympathy with, her sorrowing and devoted 
family and friends turned the scale, and she 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

decided to return and re-possess her body. 
She said it was at this moment, of mental 
decision, that the friend in attendance detected 
the returning warmth which cuhiiinated in 
full bodily rehabilitation. She was soon re- 
stored to a good degree of health, which she 
had since enjoyed. It was several years later 
that I saw her real death publicly announced. 

The Western rural travel, in the rain)- au- 
tumn or springtime, was at times, forty years 
ago, something formidable. It was before the 
era of bicycles and good road making, of 
which they have been the forerunner. I have 
still a vivid memory of some of the old 
" corduroy " roads, especially those of North- 
ern Indiana, over which we traveled in 
fulfilling appointments for anti-slavery meet- 
ings, and of the necessity to cling vigilandy to 
the seat to keep from being quite thrown from 
the wagon into the apparendy bottomless mud ! 

The Michigan Anti-Slavery Society's An- 
nual Meeting for 1855, held in October, at 
Batde Creek, which it was also my privilege 
to attend and address, was rendered a notable, 

122 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

influential occasion by the presence and stir- 
ring addresses of William Lloyd Garrison, 
Charles C. Burleigh, Henry C. Wright, Ste- 
phen S. Foster and Marius R. Robinson, 
editor of the Anti-Slavei'y Bugle. 

One of my prolonged journeys, in the winter 
of 1856, occupying several weeks, with Jacob 
Walton, Jr., Secretary of the Michigan Anti- 
Slavery Society, for a series of pioneer 
anti-slavery appointments in that State, ex- 
tended from Pontiac, not far from Detroit, in 
the East, to Grand Rapids in the West, and 
inclusive of Lansing, the State capital, was 
accomplished by wagon, before a railroad had 
yet been constructed, through what was then 
a " new " portion of the State, with still very 
primitive conditions in the home life ot many 
of the pioneer settlers. While out upon this 
" exploring expedition " we had at times in- 
tensely cold weather, and we were very 
forcibly reminded of the fate of Sir John 
Franklin's Expedition in the Arctic regions ! 
In many of the places visited ours were the 
first anti-slavery meetings ever held there. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Some of them, at this distance of time, with 
slavery aboHshed, and the whole attitude of 
the public mind changed towards it, may now 
seem to have been inconsequential, but they 
were in reality quite otherwise. It was by 
the holding of very many such meetings, and 
the dissemination through them of anti-slavery 
literature, that here and there new converts 
were won, and that, finally, public sentiment 
was so educated and revolutionized as to make 
the abolition of slavery a possibility. 



r24 



CHAPTER V. 

The Pennsylvania Anti- Slavery Society, 
outside of New England, was the strongest 
and most influential among the State auxili- 
aries of the American Anti- Slavery Society. 
I attended sundry meetings in Philadelphia, 
in the earlier period of my anti-slavery labor, 
and later occasional meetings in the Eastern 
counties. I shared, however, but to a limited 
extent in its general campaign work. 

It was my privilege to attend and address 

the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society's 

Twenty-third Annual Meeting, held in West 

Chester, in 1859. It was presided over by its 

venerable and beloved president, James Mott. 

Among the speakers were Lucretia Mott, 

Mary Grew, Robert Purvis, Rev. William H. 

Furness, Charles C. Burleigh, Rev. O. B. 

Frothingham, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, James 

Miller McKim, Edward M. Davis, Joseph A. 

Dugdale, Thomas Whitson, and others. The 

125 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

meeting was held during- two days, in the 
Horticultural Hall, and the audiences during 
the several sessions were large, of thoughtful 
earnest people. A prominent topic under 
consideration in that meeting was the move- 
ment to make Pennsylvania a Free State by 
the enactment of a Personal Liberty Law, 
similar to one which had lately been placed 
upon the statute books of Vermont. This 
was a type of legislation then claiming much 
consideration in some of the more anti-slaver}' 
States of the North to protect fugitive slaves 
and practically to nullify the odious Fugitive 
Slave Law of 1850. 

The most kind and friendly welcome ex- 
tended to me at this meeting by James and 
Lucretia Mott, and by others of the Pennsyl- 
vania abolitionists, on the occasion of this my 
first visit to West Chester, forty years ago, is 
still a most pleasant memory. 

Lucretia Mott, whose maiden name was 
Coffin, was born on Nantucket ; was educated 
in part, and subsequently became a teacher, at 
the Nine Partners Boarding School, in Dutch- 

126 





/^f^ 



/! 



LUCRETIA MOTT, 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

ess County, N. Y., a school for both boys and 
girls, under the care of the Society of Friends. 
In this school James Mott, whose birthplace 
was Loner Island. N. Y., was also a teacher. 
It was here that the acquaintance began which 
subsequently ripened into a marriage in which 
both husband and wife were greatly blessed. 
A business opening, to which James was in- 
vited, took them to Philadelphia, where, either 
in the city or its suburbs, during the more than 
half a century of their married life, they con- 
tinued to reside. Their home, characterized 
by simplicity, with the atmosphere of refine- 
ment and culture, dominated by love, blessed 
largely not only the children born to it, but 
many friends to whom its generous, uplifting 
hospitality was so freely dispensed. Vivid 
among my own early anti-slavery memories 
is the first glimpse I had of it as a guest, with 
others, at the time of one of the great anti- 
slavery meetings in Philadelphia. In the 
spacious dining room, at one end of the long 
table sat Lucretia Mott as hostess, at the other 
James Mott as our host, with William Lloyd 



129 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Dr. William H. 
Furness, Mary Grew, Robert Purvis and oth- 
ers among the guests, and all made to feel 
quite at ease. Lovely and beloved as was 
Lucretia Mott in her public service, she was 
not less, but even more ideal in her home life. 
She was a delightful hostess, and had the gift 
of leading and keeping the conversation gen- 
eral for the interest and entertainment of all. 

I recall also how, in a quiet way, toward the 
end of the dinner, during the period of the 
dessert, she had the earlier dishes, which had 
been removed and washed, returned to her, 
to be dried by her own hands, thus herself 
relieving the heavily taxed kitchen maids, 
meanwhile bearing her full share with her 
guests in the most engaging table talk ! It 
was a memorable picture, a complete refutation 
of the criticism which used often to be made, 
and which still survives in certain quarters, to 
the effect that the woman who goes upon the 
public platform and shares in public service 
must needs be an inferior housekeeper and 
home maker. 

130 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Too-ether Tames and Lucretia Mott wel- 
corned William Lloyd Garrison in Philadelphia, 
on his return journey to Boston from Baltimore, 
after his imprisonment in the latter city. 
Later, in 1833, together they attended the 
National Anti-Slavery Convention at which 
was organized the American Anti- Slavery 
Society. Robert Purvis, who was also a 
member of that historic convention, not long 
before his death, in giving me some account 
of its proceedings and incidents, referred to 
Lucretia's helpful part in it with the greatest 
admiration. He said that as she sat, busy 
with her knitting, as was her wont on such 
occasions, when the various documents sub- 
mitted for adoption were under consideration, 
she made sundry suggestions for amendment, 
the change of a phrase, or the substitution of 
a word here and there, all of which were 
readily and unanimously accepted and adopted. 
James Mott's name is among the signers of 
the Convention's Declaration, but Lucretia, 
beino- a woman, was not asked, or then ex- 
pected to sign. Subsequently these two royal 



131 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

souls shared together many perils and sacri- 
fices in their prolonged and devoted service 
in the anti-slavery reform. They also attended 
together the World's Anti-Slavery Convention 
in London, in 1840, in which Lucretia, and 
other regularly accredited women delegates 
from America, were not allowed to take seats. 
Lucretia Mott was, in a very important 
sense, a pioneer in the movement to secure 
equal rights for women. As a teacher, she 
was made to feel early in life the inequality 
between the sexes in the matter of compen- 
sation for a kindred service. The opposition 
to the equal recognition of women in anti- 
slavery circles in this country, as well as in 
London, much impressed her with the need 
and importance of organized effort to secure 
equality of rights, the repeal or amendment of 
unequal laws, and full enfranchisement for 
women. She joined with Mrs. Stanton, 
Martha C. Wright (a younger sister of Lu- 
cretia Mott), and others, in holding a Woman's 
Riehts Convention, at Seneca Falls, N. Y., as 
early as July 1 9 and 20, 1 848. James Mott pre- 

132 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

sided over this convention, which at that time 
was greeted with much ridicule. Lucretia 
Uved to see many of the unequal and unjust 
laws affecting women amended, and a great 
change in the current of popular feeling 
concerning woman's full and equal enfran- 
chisement. These beneficent changes were 
greatly promoted by her own judicious advo- 
cacy, and the powerful, exemplary influence 
of her own true and beautiful womanhood. 

The Peace movement also enlisted very 
fully her sympathy, and to it she gave much 
helpful co-operation. She strongly deprecated 
war, and in her public ministry among Friends, 
and in Peace meetings and conventions, bore 
a faithful, effective testimony in favor of arbi- 
tration, and everywhere upheld the Christian 
teaching of " peace on earth and good will 

among men." 

She was also deeply interested in the tem- 
• perance reform, and gave to it, beside her 
personal example of abstinence from intoxica- 
ting beverages, much valuable public aid and 
encouragement. 

133 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

Lucretia Mott, as a religious teacher in the 
Society of Friends, was without a peer in 
modern times. Liberal in thought, catholic 
in spirit, persuasive and truly eloquent in 
utterance, patient with prejudiced opposition, 
and sometimes marked discourtesy, she ex- 
erted a mighty transforming influence, so that 
in the later years of her ministry in the Society 
she was everywhere welcomed with tokens of 
respect and affection. Especially was she 
greatly beloved and reverenced by the 
younger Friends, with whom she always 
kept in closely sympathetic touch. 

At the time of her visit to England in 1840 
she encountered not a little prejudice on ac- 
count of her well known liberal religious 
opinions. A curious instance of this is 
recorded in Haydon's Autobiography, a copy 
of which I was shown in a London library by 
an English friend, who knew and greatly 
esteemed her. B. R. Haydon, a well known 
artist of that period, who had been secured 
by some members of the convention to paint 
a picture of its opening, had sittings from 

134 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

various persons, more or less representative, 
for this purpose. Among these selected ones 
was Lucretia Mott. The artist, whose first 
impressions of her were evidently pleasant, 
intended to give her a conspicuous place m 
his historic sketch, but changed his mind for 
the reason given in the following diary note, 
which appears in his autobiography: 

" 29th.— Lucretia Mott, the leader of the dele- 
gate women from America, sat. I found her out 
to have infidel notions, and resolved at once, narrow 
minded or not, not to give her the prominent place 
I first intended. I will reserve that for a beautiful 
believer in the Divinity of Christ." 

In the large painting made by him, which 
I saw last year in the National Gallery, Lon- 
don, one figure is indicated, in an accompany- 
ing chart, as that of Lucretia Mott, but as 
given in a group in the distance, it is neither 
prominent nor recognizable. He subsequent- 
ly painted a portrait of her for the Duchess 
of Sutherland. 

At the close of the Penns)'lvania Anti- 
Slavery Society's anniversary at West Chester 



135 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

in 1859 to which I have referred, it was my 
privilege to journey with Lucretia Mott by 
carriage, as guests of Joseph A. Dugdale, and 
to attend with her an appointed anti-slavery 
meeting- at Lonsfwood, Pa, The Lonofwood 
meeting of " Proofressive Friends " was one 
outgrowth of the anti-slavery agitation, which 
as resisted by the more conservative Friends 
in Chester County, resulted in the disownment 
of several of the more radical and aggressive 
abolitionists of the body. Lucretia and myself 
were most cordially welcomed at this special 
meeting which had been appointed for us, and 
I then became acquainted also with a group of 
choice friends — the Coxes, Pennocks, Dug- 
dales, Mendenhalls, Darlingtons, and others 
with whom I enjoyed very pleasant relations 
in subsequent years, among whom are still 
Samuel and Deborah Pennock and Lydia and 
Anna Cox of Kennett Square. It is an inter- 
esting fact that in 1874 the Kennett Monthly 
Meeting of Friends, unsolicited, extended an 
official invitation to Samuel Pennock and other 
of the surviving " disowned" abolitionists to 

136 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

be reinstated and again become members of 
the Meeting, an invitation which was accepted 
in the kindly spirit in which it was given. 

From Longwood I accompanied Lucretia 
to Wilmington, Delaware, where we were 
guests of Thomas Garrett, chief among the 
representatives and managers of the " Under- 
ground Railroad." 

Thomas Garrett, who was a member of the 
Society of Friends, was also a pronounced 
opponent of slavery, one of the strongest 
pillars and one of the most efficient working 
members of the American Anti-Slavery So- 
ciety. A resident of a Border Slave State, a 
man of great tact, resource, and undaunted 
courage, moral and physical, he was truly a 
Moses to a multitude of fugitives from slavery, 
and a terror to their masters. At the time of 
the abolition of slavery he had preserved a 
record of twenty-five hundred and forty-five 
fugitives whom he had helped to escape from 
skvery, and he had assisted something over 
two hundred others, before he commenced 
the preservation of the remarkable record ! 

137 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

At ihe age of sixty he was deprived of" all his 
property, through the machinery of the pro- 
slavery courts, on account of his befriending 
fugitive slaves, but such was the confidence 
and esteem which his heroic, upright character 
commanded, that he had the needed capital 
at once proffered by friends to continue his 
business — hardware — in which he was much 
prospered, was able to make good all his 
losses, and to enjoy a comfortable competence. 
He was a man of discriminating intelligence, 
of firmness as well as kindliness, and with 
little respect for, or patience with, shams of 
any kind, in religious, political or social life, 
I very much enjoyed this visit in his hospit- 
able home. 

From Wilmington I returned with Lucretia 
to Philadelphia, and attended with her the 
mid-week Friends' meeting at Fifteenth and 
Race streets, where were in attendance sev- 
eral hundred children, scholars of the Friends' 
School. It was a most attractive, beautiful 
picture of young life. On our way to the 
meetinor Lucretia said to me that if I should 

138 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

feel that I had anything to say to the children 
she hoped I would be quite free to say it. I 
did feel on seeing them that I had a brief 
message for them, to which they listened with 
kindly attention. Lucretia followed, and told 
them of my anti-slavery labors, as a young 
man, etc. She in turn was followed by a 
rather conservative Friend, who had not then 
been fully converted to the anti-slavery gos- 
pel, whose communication seemed somewhat 
to discount both Lucretia and myself. To 
Lucretia this was no new experience, but to 
myself, at that time, it was somewhat as 
though a bucket of cold water had been 
poured over me ! 

It was a decade later and a little more, in 
January, 1871, that I was again in Wilmington 
with Lucretia Mott, this time to attend, by 
invitation, the funeral of our dear friend 
Thomas Garrett. He had in the interveninof 
period of my anti-slavery labors been to me, 
indeed, as " a Father in Israel." The tributes 
paid to his memory by his fellow citizens, of 
all classes, white and colored, were something 

139 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

remarkable. For two hours before his body 
was taken from the house a continuous stream 
of humanity passed around the coffin to take 
a last look at the face of him whom they so 
much esteemed and honored. Then, borne 
upon the shoulders of stalwart colored men, 
who had asked the privilege, it was taken at 
the head of a procession through streets 
thronged with citizens, to the Friends' Meet- 
ing House, where funeral services were held, 
w^hich only a small fraction of those desiring 
could attend, and thence to its final resting 
place in the adjacent burial plot. At this fu- 
neral service Lucretia Mott's presence and her 
words were, indeed, as a benediction. 

Edward M. Davis, closely associated with 
James and Lucretia Mott, in family relation- 
ship and in the anti-slavery and other reform 
movements, was one.of the most executive of 
the Pennsylvania abolitionists, whose acquaint- 
ance I formed early and whose continued 
friendship I prized highly. He was a forceful 
speaker, but also brought to the anti-slavery 
movement the executive efficiency of a suc- 

140 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

cessful man of business. As a business man 
he was the soul of honor, and justly esteemed 
for his uprightness of character. He was often 
introduced as " Lucretia Mott's son-in-law," 
a distinction which he was wont humorously 
to refer to, and much enjoyed. He was a 
man of ereat kindness of heart and tenderest 
sympathy. 

After the abolition of slavery, he extended, 
in a brotherly spirit, his helpful co-operation 
in my special work in the temperance reform, 
and also with our New York Committee for 
the Prevention of State Regulation of Vice, 
thoueh he shrank from the discussion of that 
subject. In a letter from Philadelphia, accom- 
panying a contribution in aid of the work of 
that Committee, and in response to an invita- 
tion to one of our earlier meetings at the "Isaac 
T. Hopper Home" in New York, he wrote: 

"I cannot be present, and if I could I fear I 
should not be, for I have not risen to the position 
to be able to discuss this terrible question in what 
we call a mixed assembly when we mean of both 
sexes, but I honor all those who can, and especially 
those who do what is called and is really the work 

141 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

in this important matter. So I send a mite en- 
closed, just to satisfy my conscience, for I know it 
is my duty to do something in some direction, so 
like all cowards or drones I accept the easiest 
way." 

In a letter when he was nearing the close 
of his life, and we were meeting less frequently 
than at an earlier period, referring to our long 
continued relation of friendship he wrote : 

" Although I may seldom see you or your wife, 
if you think of me as often as I do of you, we keep 
up a very friendly and frequent correspondence." 

And at the close of another letter of this 
period he said : " If I could only feel old, I 
would say, with the blessings of an old man." 

Mary Grew, whom it was also my privilege 
early to know as a personal friend, was an 
exceptionally gifted speaker and writer, whose 
labors, with both voice and pen, were most 
influential and helpful in behalf of the slave, 
both within and beyond the domain of the 
Pennsylvania Anti- Slavery Society. Less 
familiarly, I knew also her honored father, 

142 



PERSONA L REMIXISCENCES. 

Rev. Henry Grew. Both were fellow voy- 
agers with James and Lucretia Mott to the 
World's Anti-Slavery Convention in London 
in 1840. Of the Philadelphia Female Anti- 
Slavery Society, organized the year after the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, of which 
Lucretia Mott was for many years the presi- 
dent, Mary Grew was secretary during a 
kindred period and until its final dissolution 
upon the abolition of slavery. Her annual 
reports were models of their kind, and have 
a permanent value for students as contribu- 
tions to anti -slavery history. She rendered 
valuable anti-slavery service as joint editor, 
with James Miller McKim, of the Pennsyl- 
vania Freeman. I also received from her, 
from time to time, assistance most grateful 
during my own editorship of the National 
Anti-Slavery Standard the last years of its 
publication. As a speaker she was persua- 
sive, logical and convincing, morally cour- 
ageous, equal to any emergency, but less 
aesTressive and denunciatorv than some of 
her compeers on the anti-slavery platform. 

143 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

She was deeply interested in, and aided 
efficiently, the efforts to secure enlarged op- 
portunities for women, industrial, civil and 
political. She also gave to us most grateful 
and helpful sympathy and co-operation in our 
work for the repression of vice and the pro- 
motion of purity, alike for both sexes. 

She was much interested in liberal religious 
thought, and a gifted interpreter of spiritual 
truth, occupying occasionally, in the later 
years of her life, pulpits to which she was in- 
vited. In this direction she recoQfnized her 
indebtedness to Lucretia Mott. In a letter 
to the latter, after the death of James Mott, 
she wrote: 

"If I were to try, I could never tell you, dear 
friend and teacher, how much you have done for 
me. The breaking of some spiritual fetters, the 
parting of some clouds which opened deeper vistas 
into heaven, I owe to you. 

Some day, perhaps, in this world or another, 
sitting at your feet, I can tell you more of this. 
Now, sorrowing in your sorrow, I can do little 
more than pray that you may be blessed and com- 
forted, even as you have blessed and comforted 
others." 



144 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

In a letter of deep and tender sympathy to 
my wife and myself when we were suffering 
from a severe bereavement, accompanying a 
volume, which she hoped might be helpful to 
us, in that period of sore need, as it had been 
to her, she made this comment, indicating also 
her own thought of God: 

" The worst feature of it is that worst feature of 
our prevailing theology, which represents our God 
and Father in a character unworthy of those dear 
names. Whep I am pained and oppressed with 
the thought of the blindness and ignorance of so 
large a part of the leaders of the church, and 
wonder at their miserable conceptions of the char- 
acter of God, which lead them to regard theological 
dogmas as far more important than a Christ-like 
spirit and life, I console myself with a view of the 
immense progress which mankind has made, in this 
respect, within a few centuries. The heretics of 
a hundred years ago are the orthodox of to-day. 
Though theological shells are called, still, by their 
old names, their kernels are so changed, by the 
ripening process of the years, that their ' sponsors 
in baptism,' who gave them those names, would not 
know them now. My double metaphor is perfectly 
shocking ; I guess it wrote itself ; at any rate I decline 
being sponsor for it !" 

In a letter to my wife, referring to our re- 
US 



PERSOXA L REMINISCENCES. 

lation of personal friendship, greatly prized by 
my wife as myself, she wrote: 

" Your and Mr. Powell's photographs lie on my 
table, making me wish that they could speak to me. 
Mr. Powell's looks as if it would, but it does not. 
How good they both are! I believe I sent you my 
thanks for them, last summer, when writing to 
Mr. Powell, but I repeat them now. It is rather 
late to answer the kind and welcome letter which 
contained them, as I have seen you since; but it is 
not too late to tell you that your letters are always 
welcome to me, and that I should highly value the 
privilege of frequent intercourse with you face to 
face. I am now looking forward to the pleasure of 
seeing you both here, at our Annual Meeting. Do 
not fail to come, we need yow both; and it does us 
all good, I think, to meet on these occasions." 

In another she wrote: 

" It would have given me much pleasure to see 
you and Mrs. Powell, on my return from Providence. 
I like to remember my visit to your home." 

Such friendships were, indeed, a rich com- 
pensation for the obloquy and ostracism for 
abolitionists which was linked with the anti- 
slavery conflict. 

146 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

James Miller McKim, whom I knew less 
intimately, was educated for the ministry, and 
was for a brief period a Presbyterian minister. 
He attended the National Anti-Slavery Con- 
vention of 1833 in Philadelphia, and was one 
of the organizers of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society, subsequently becoming one 
of its Lecturing Agents. Later, as Corres- 
ponding Secretary and General Manager of 
the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society, as 
editor of the Pennsylvania Frecmaii and 
Philadelphia correspondent of the National 
Anti-Slavery Standard, as agent of the Un- 
derground Railroad, and subsequently as an 
organizer of, and co-worker with, societies for 
the education of the P>eedmen, he filled a 
sphere of exceptional usefulness. 

Robert Purvis was another of the anti- 
slavery pioneers by whom I was very kindly 
welcomed to that field of service. Born 
in Charleston, S. C his father a native of 
Northumberland, England, and his mother of 
Moorish descent, free-born, he was educated 
in the North, completing his education at 

'47 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Amherst College, and subsequently residing 
in Philadelphia or its vicinity. He had rare 
oratorical gifts, marked dignity and grace of 
manner, and was always a welcome speaker 
in anti-slavery meetings and conventions. 
He was a member of the National Anti- 
Slavery Convention in Philadelphia, in 1833, 
and a signer of its Declaration, but still earlier 
had been a co-worker with Benjamin Lundy, 
against slavery. He chose to identify himself 
with the victim and enslaved race, though 
when he thus referred to himself his hearers 
would look at him with incredulity, so slight 
was the connecting link. Blessed with a 
pecuniary competence he was a generous 
helper in money, as well as in personal ser- 
vice, both of the Pennsylvania, and the 
American Anti- Slavery Society. He was 
public spirited, and highly esteemed by many 
of his fellow citizens, of the better class, not 
immediately identified with the anti-slavery 
movement. He was an earnest believer in 
equal rights for women, and a frequent and 



148 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

welcome speaker on the woman suffrage 
platform. 

He was a genial host. In connection with 
one of my earliest visits to Philadelphia, 
many years ago, I was most kindly welcomed 
by him, and by his family, in their hospitable 
rural home of that period, at Byberry; a 
refuge and shelter also for many a fugitive 
from slavery, en route to Canada. 

It was following this early visit to Byberry, 
that, accompanied by Mr. Purvis, I made my 
first visit also to Bristol, Pa., in the home of 
Cyrus and Ruth Peirce. They and their sons 
and daughters, intimate friends of and co- 
workers with Lucretia Mott, Robert Purvis 
and Mary Grew, were among the stalwart 
abolitionists of the time. It was an ideal 
Quaker home dedicated to high thought, and 
upright, exemplary living, to which were also 
welcomed from time to time William Lloyd 
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Lucy Stone, 
Charles C. Burleigh, and other well known 
representatives of the anti-slavery and kindred 
reform movements. Associated with this 

149 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

home for a considerable period, under the 
care and direction of the daughters, Ruth 
Anna, (now Mrs. Ruth Anna Peirce DeCou,) 
Sarah and Fanny, was a very successful priv- 
ate school, of an exceptionally interesting 
character. Its fortunate students had not 
only first class intellectual advantages, but 
added thereto also a superior moral training. 
Despite the prevalent color prejudice, and 
threatened loss of patronage, colored students 
were received, sharing equally the opportun- 
ities afforded by the school. It was a delight 
to witness the well merited happiness of the 
venerable and venerated parents in their large 
family, of both sons and daughters. 

Sarah H. Peirce, whose later years, with 
her sisters, were passed in Philadelphia, filled 
a place of much usefulness in the Society of 
Friends, of which she was a representative 
member, — as were her parents formerly, — as 
a helper in the cause of education for the 
colored people, for whose emancipation she 
had labored ; for the promotion of peace and 
arbitration ; temperance ; civilization for the 

150 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Indian, and the enfranchisement of women. 
She was a member of the General Council of 
the American Purity Alliance, and did much 
in quiet ways, especially in the judicious use 
of literature, to promote the purity movement. 
With physical disability which limited her 
later activity, her patient perseverance in 
makincr the uttermost of her opportunities to 
render helpful, generous service for others, 
especially the poor and lowly, was a rarely 
beautiful object lesson. Her messages to us 
when she could herself no longer hold and 
guide the pen, but expressed through the 
hand of another, were affectionate, inspiring 
and replete with spiritual strength. 

Rev. William H. Furness, who was from 
an early period a prominent figure in anti- 
slavery circles, I knew less familiarly, but 
esteemed most highly. His presence in our 
anti-slavery meetings in Philadelphia, New 
York and elsewhere, was as a benediction. 
Of New England birth, the school companion 
in the Boston Latin School, the college-mate 
at Harvard and intimate life-lonor friend of 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, he brought to the 
anti-slavery movement, as he took to his 
church in Philadelphia, intellectual culture of 
the finest quality, unflinching moral heroism, 
and an attractive personality, characterized by 
simplicity, sincerity, much kindliness and grace 
of manner. Between himself and Lucretia 
Mott was a very strong bond of personal 
friendship. 

His high appreciation of her exalted char- 
acter was many times expressed. A note- 
worthy instance was in a sermon preached 
after one of the very exciting fugitive slave 
trials in Philadelphia, the Dangerfield case, 
in which Lucretia sat by the side of the 
negro fugitive throughout the prolonged trial, 
wherein he said : 

" I looked the other day into that low, dark and 
crowded room, in which one of the most wicked 
laws that man ever enacted was in process of exe- 
cution, and there I beheld the living presence of 
that Spirit of Christ, out of which shall again grow 
the beautiful Body of Christ, the true church. 

" The close and heated atmosphere of the place 
well became the devilish work that was going on. 



15- 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

The question was, whether, for no crime, but for 
the color of the skin which God gave him, a fellow- 
man should be robbed of his dear liberty and 
degraded to a chattel and a brute. 

' ' There sat the man in his old hat and red flannel 
shirt and ragged coat, just as he was seized by the 
horrible despotism. There he sat, while questions 
were discussed involving things dearer to him than 
life. On one side of him stood the minister of the 
cruel law. On the other — the place was luminous 
to my soul with a celestial light — for there stood a 
devoted Christian woman, blind to all outward dis- 
tinctions and defacements, deaf to the idle babble 
of the world's tongues, cheering her poor hunted 
brother with the sisterly sympathy of her silent 
presence. 

"And as I looked upon her, I felt that Christ 
was there; that no visible halo of sanctity was 
needed to distinguish that simple act of humanity, 
done under such circumstances, as an act pre- 
eminently Christian, profoundly sacred, ineffably 
religious." 

Dr. Furness presented to Swarthmore Col- 
lege a beautiful portrait of Lucretia, painted 
by his son, William Henry Furness, which 
now adorns the Assembly Hall of the College, 
of the founding of which she and James Alott 
were among the early promoters. In con- 
nection with the presentation of this portrait 



153 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

he says : " I used to be present when Lucretia 
had her sittings, and we had pleasant talks 
together. The book that she is represented 
as having open in her lap is a volume of 
Blanco White's Life and Letters, from which 
she read favorite passages aloud." 

He lived to the advanced age of 92, and 
passed on to the larger life January 30, 1896. 
In a letter from a Philadelphia friend, Mrs. 
Charlotte S. Lewis, which I received the clay 
following the largely attended funeral, she 
writes : 

" We looked for the last time on the genial face 
of our dear old Dr. Furness to-day. An unusually 
beautiful life with a most fitting- close — a falling to 
sleep in the arms of his loved Horace after a sweet 
smile of recognition. His character will live among 
us as a forcible lesson." 



154 



CHAPTER VI. 



The major portion of my service in the 
anti-slavery lecture field, and in meetings and 
conventions in behalf of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society, during the latter part of the 
fifties and early in the sixties, covering nearly 
a decade, was within the limits of the State 
of New York, with occasional visits in Penn- 
sylvania, and in New England. I became 
quite familiar with nearly every part of the 
Empire State. 

On Long Island I early had the co-opera- 
tion, most kind and helpful, of Joseph and 
Mary W. Post and their family. In their 
very hospitable home at Westbury I was 
welcomed from time to time with a cordiality 
and freedom, which, in that period of general 
social ostracism for abolitionists, made it seem, 
indeed, like an oasis in the desert. They 
were exemplary, faithful members of the 
Society of Friends, and were also the warm 

155 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

personal friends of James and Lucretia Mott. 
Not only was I received in their home for 
entertainment, but they also opened their 
house for my meetings, at a time when the 
Friends' Meeting House, strange as it may 
now seem, was closed against them. Boards 
were brought in by Joseph and laid from 
chair to chair, and thus were the sittings in- 
creased to meet the needs of the occasion. 
A few white, and more colored people, some 
of them former slaves, constituted the audi- 
ences. They journeyed with me in their 
capacious carriage to Jericho, Jerusalem, and 
other adjacent towns, chiefly Friends' neigh- 
borhoods, for other meetings. On one 
occasion, now more than forty years ago, we 
drove to Jericho, where formerly lived Elias 
Hicks. We attended the mid-week Friends' 
meeting. At its close Joseph made a request 
for the use of the Meeting House for an 
anti-slavery meeting that evening. The at- 
tendance was not large; all present were 
individually willing, but collectively they were 
not free to give consent, because of some 

^56 



PERSONAL REMTNISCENCES. 

previous action of the Monthly Meeting 
against the opening of the meeting houses for 
anti-slavery meetings. It was therefore ar- 
ranged that we should hold our meeting in a 
school-house, a mile or two distant. Every 
Friend in attendance at the meeting in the 
morning, though the evening proved dark 
and stormy, was present at our school-house 
meetinsf, amontr the number beine a 
daughter of Elias Hicks, who expressed much 
interest. 

We next visited Jerusalem, where then 
resided Arden Seaman, a well known, liberal 
minister among Friends. At Jerusalem, as 
at Jericho, there was the adverse Monthly 
Meeting rule against using the Friends' 
Meeting House for anti-slavery meetings, but 
Friend Seaman, who was of a rather heroic 
mould, decided that, Andrew Jackson like, he 
would "take the responsibility," and open 
the meetinof house for our meeting. A few 
Friends and others came and we had a very 
good meeting. 

Quiet and undemonstrative, Joseph and 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Mary Post had much firmness blended with 
gentleness of character, and a faith which was 
undaunted, however formidable and immov- 
able the opposition might appear to be. 

Their active, helpful interest was not con- 
fined to the anti -slavery reform ; they were 
ready to extend s)'mpathy and aid to all 
humane, benevolent efforts. They were real 
Friends, and though in the earlier period of 
their lives they were often made to feel that 
they were in the minority, in their later years 
they were better understood, and b)^ all held 
in much esteem. They were to me as a 
father and mother throughout my anti-slavery 
labors. They also extended to us grateful 
sympathy and most helpful co-operation in 
our later w^ork for the promotion of purity, 
and an equal standard of morals for men and 
women. In a letter, accompanying a gener- 
ous contribution, at a time when a measure 
had been introduced in the New York Legis- 
lature to provide for State regulation of vice, 
not very long before her transition to the 
larger life, Mary wrote : 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

"I keep hoping for better times, but really it 
seems as though there never was a time when it 
was more needful to be on the alert to prevent evil 
legislation than the present. I have, with all the 
discouragements, felt that the world was growing 
better, and I see cause for hope, when from the 
pulpits we hear the severe arraignment by popular 
ministers of the evils prevailing. 

''I hope you workers will keep up courage and 
work on, and, perhaps as in the past, your labors 
may prevent the legalizing of social vice. It would 
be dreadful. I thought our State stood on higher 
ground. 

' ' I think The Philanthropist is doing a good work, 
perhaps more than previously, and among Friends 
too. Some who could not tolerate it or its edi- 
tors seem quite friendly disposed. We shall miss 

's influence; he was more interested in 

the movement than any other of our Friends. 

" I cannot but hope you will succeed in getting 
a bill for a Reformatory for women. It seems to 
me every one must see the imperative need. 

" I wish I could aid in all these labors, but my 
day is over — and indeed I never was of any help as 
a public advocate. I could zuish it well, and hand 
the cup of cold water to the faithful. " 

What Joseph and Mary Post and family 
were to me in my early and later anti-slavery 
labors on Long Island, that were Joseph and 
Maro-aret Carpenter and family in Westchester 



159 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

County. Joseph Carpenter was the " Friend 
Joseph" mentioned with so much apprecia- 
tion by Lydia Maria Child in her Romance 
of the Republic. She was for a time, during 
the period of her editorship of the National 
Anti-Slavery Standard, an inmate of their 
very pleasant country home at Mamaroneck. 
She was for many years, and until her death, 
the intimate friend of the daughter, Esther 
Carpenter Pierce, who still survives in a 
serene, beautiful old age, at Pleasantville. 
It was the grand daughter, who bore the 
honored name of Lydia Maria Child Pierce, 
a young woman of much promise, who was 
of the first eraduatino^ class of Swarthmore 
College. Joseph Carpenter's Mamaroneck 
home was also one of the important stations 
on the " Underground Railway" and sheltered 
and helped on his or her way to freedom in 
Canada many an escaping fugitive from 
slavery. 

My Westchester anti-slavery meetings, 
which were arranged for by Joseph Carpenter, 
and to which he accompanied me in Mamar- 

i6o 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

oneck, New Rochelle, Port Chester, and at 
other points, were attended by Hmited aud- 
iences of white people, and by more colored 
people resident in the different localities. 
There was much prejudice against colored 
people in this region, so much, that at that 
time in New Rochelle colored people were 
denied burial in any of its cemeteries or 
burial places. To meet this difficulty Joseph 
Carpenter set apart a portion of one of the 
fields of his Mamaroneck farm as a burial plot 
for the colored people. By his direction his 
own body was interred therein. I visited him 
a short time previous to his death, when he 
acquainted me with this arrangement for the 
disposition of his body, as a last testimony 
against the then prevailing — and, alas, still 
prevalent — unchristian color prejudice. In 
accordance with his wish I also attended his 
funeral, and to those assembled bore my tes- 
timony to his memory and great personal 
worth. It was an occasion long to be remem- 
bered. His body, clothed in his wonted plain 
Friendly costume, was placed for burial, as he 

i6i 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

had also directed, in a plain, unstained pine 
coffin. At the conclusion of the services the 
coffin was carried out upon the lawn, in the 
shade of the trees he loved so well, and then 
those in attendance, colored and white, gath- 
ered about it to take a last look at the face of 
him whom they loved and reverenced. Then 
it was borne by colored men, who had re- 
quested the privilege, to its final resting place, 
among those of the proscribed colored people 
whom he had befriended. 

At a later period the body of Margaret 
Carpenter, the wife, a woman of sterling worth, 
sharing fully the deep feeling of her husband 
concerning the great injustice from which the 
colored people, both bond and free, were suf- 
ferers, was also interred in this unique, and 
now historic, burial plot. 

Joseph Carpenter suffered keenly, as a 
Friend, at the time of the disownment of 
Isaac T. Hopper, Charles Marriott, and James 
S. Gibbons, by the New York Yearly Meet- 
ing, on account of their connection with the 
Executive Committee of the American Anti- 

162 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Slavery Society, and the strictures upon 
pro-slavery Friends by its organ, the National 
Anti-Slavery Standard. He was so much 
pained by this prescriptive action, which he 
believed to be most uncalled for and unjust, 
that he never afterward felt at liberty to at- 
tend a Yearly Meeting in New York. 

Gentle and lovable in spirit, he had a large 
circle of warmly attached personal friends, and 
had many requests for his photograph. 

He had one photograph taken with a little 
colored boy, the child of a colored woman 
whom they had befriended, standing by him, 
and these he would give to friends from whom 
he had such requests, feeling that he was at 
the same time conveying silently the lesson 
he so much desired to teach concerning the 
cruel and unjust color prejudice. 

Moses Pierce the son-in-law of Joseph and 
Margaret Carpenter, and Esther Carpenter 
Pierce, the daughter, and their family, ot 
Pleasantville, sympathized warmly with the 
beloved father and mother in their interest in 
the anti-slavery, peace, temperance and other 

163 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

humane, reformatory movements. Their 
very hospitable home was also another of my 
own anti-slavery homes, wherein I have had 
a warm welcome and much kindness. 

Moses Pierce was an active Friend, and at 
a New York Yearly Meeting a few years 
ago, not long before his death, he introduced 
a proposition, which it was my own privilege 
to second, to the effect that, slavery having 
been abolished, an appropriate minute be 
made acknowledging the error of the Yearly 
Meeting, at the time when pro-slavery preju- 
dice was rife against the abolitionists, in 
disowning Isaac T. Hopper, Charles Marriott 
and James S. Gibbons. It was just as the 
meeting was about to adjourn, and the way 
did not appear to be open for the proposed 
action at that time. It would still be a cred- 
itable thing for the Yearly Meeting to do. 
As the record now stands the verdict of 
history is against it. 

Esther Carpenter Pierce, upon whom large- 
ly the mantle of her beloved father descended, 
has, for a quarter of a century, since the 

164 




Joseph Carpenter. 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

anti-slavery conflict culminated, been, as she 
still is, one of our most valued and sympa- 
thetic helpers in our mission for the promo- 
tion of purity. 

It was early in the sixties that by invita- 
tion of Hon. John Jay I visited the Jay 
Homestead, in Westchester County. I was 
attending, in behalf of the American Anti- 
Slavery Society, a series of meetings, accom- 
panied and assisted by my wife, Anna Rice 
Powell, and my sister, Elizabeth M. Powell 
(now Elizabeth Powell Bond, Dean of Swarth- 
more College), in Bedford, Mt. Kisco, and at 
other points in Westchester County and 
Eastern New York. Bedford is not far 
from the Jay Homestead, the former home 
also of Hon. William Jay. Mr. Jay was 
unable to attend the meeting, but sent a very 
kind message, and his carriage to take us to 
his historic home. We were shown many 
interesting mementoes of the honored father. 
Judge William Jay, and of the distinguished 
grandfather, Chief Justice John Jay, the first 
Chief Justice of the United States, with por- 

167 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

tions of the accumulated libraries of each. I 
have before me, as I write, a very interesting 
volume, " Miscellaneous Writings on Slavery," 
by William Jay, presented to me on the occa- 
sion of this visit, by John Jay. It is stated 
therein that the first society ever formed, it 
is believed, for the abolition of slavery, was 
organized in the city of New York, January, 
1785, under the presidency of John Jay, the 
first Chief Justice. The principles of this 
pioneer society are indicated in the following 
declaration of its distinguished president: 

"I wish to see all unjust and unnecessary 
discriminations everywhere abolished, and that the 
time may soon come, when all our inhabitants, of 
every color and denomination, shall be free and 

EQUAL PARTAKERS OF OUR POLITICAL LIBERTY." 

John Jay, who, subsequent to our visit, was 
appointed United States Minister to Austria, 
and who was for a prolonged period President 
of the Union League Club, was a high- 
minded, public spirited citizen, influential in 
public affairs, a man of much kindness of 

168 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

heart, a most genial host, and a worthy des- 
cendant of his honored progenitors. 

During the decade following 1855 I at- 
tended and addressed, in behalf of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society, many meet- 
ings and conventions in the State of New 
York. In some of the meetings, at times, I 
was the only speaker, but generally, during 
these years, I was associated with others. 
My most intimate and constant associate for 
this period was Susan B. Anthony. Together 
we held meetings in many of the localities 
which I had previously visited during the 
first year or two of my anti-slavery service. 
In 1S56 Miss Anthony was appointed a 
General Manager for an anti-slavery campaign 
in the State of New York, and an extended 
series of meetings was arranged for, to which 
Charles Lenox Remond and his sister, Sarah 
P. Remond, of Massachusetts, were assigned 
by the Executive Committee as speakers, in 
addition to Miss Anthony and myself. 

Miss Anthony's previous limited public 
service had been mainly in connection with 

169 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

educational and temperance work, and, in an 
initial way, for the enfranchisement of wo- 
men. She was deeply moved by the wrongs 
of the slave, and the cruel injustice of slavery, 
and dedicated herself most earnestly and 
unselfishly to the anti-slavery movement, 
quickened thereto especially by Stephen and 
Abby Kelley Foster, whose stirring meetings 
she had attended in Rochester and elsewhere. 
With much executive force she attended to 
the many and wearisome details and drudgery 
involved in such campaigning for an unpopu- 
lar cause. In her previous public addresses 
she had been confined mainly to the use of 
manuscript ; in these earlier anti-slavery 
meetings, which we attended together, she 
gained her first experience in extempore 
speaking, and not without a heroic struggle. 

Of the prevalent cruel prejudice against 
color we had striking illustrations in connec- 
tion with our meetings which were attended 
and addressed by Mr. and Miss Remond. 
Educated, refined and sensitive, they were 
continually and painfully reminded of the 

170 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

heartless and vulgar color prejudice. Hotels 
and boarding houses which would receive 
Miss Anthony and myself, rudely denied ad- 
mission to them, and solely on the ground of 
color. On one occasion I recall beine a 
guest, with the Remonds, in the home of anti- 
slavery friends in Washington County, N. Y. 
A neighbor called while we were there and 
o^ave a distressingr account of a neelected 
family in the vicinity, sufferers from small- 
pox. On account of the dread disease, and 
the fear of contao^ion, others shrank from q:o- 
ing to them to minister to their needs. Mr. 
Remond, at the conclusion of the painful 
narrative, after an expression of sympathy for 
the suffering, quietly, and with much signific- 
ance remarked : " To colored people it is the 
same as having the small-pox all the time." 

We were all subjected, more particularly 
during the winter months, to many discom- 
forts, much exposure and not a little fatigue, 
especially in our journe)'ing away from the 
larger cities and towns. I remember one ride 
of twenty-five miles in Northern New York, 

171 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

in mid-winter, in a stag^e sleigh, with closely 
buttoned curtains, no ventilation, and the 
mercury at thirty-two degrees below zero. 
There were several men among the passen- 
gers, who were very offensive in their use of 
tobacco. The driver, after an admonition that 
I might perish from the cold, finally allowed 
me to share his seat, and wTaps, on the out- 
side. Though the cold was intense, I escaped 
from the tobacco poisoning, was not actually 
frozen, and was able to meet my anti-slavery 
appointment in the evening. 

Our real headquarters for these successive 
New York State anti-slavery campaigns, for 
the several years, if we may be said to have 
had any, were in Albany. Residing there 
were Lydia Mott, and her sister, Jane Mott, 
also Phebe H. Jones and Margaret, her 
daughter, closely in touch with the American 
Anti- Slavery Society. For a time also there 
was an Anti -Slavery Depository established 
in Albany, under the care of our dear friend, 
Lydia IMott. Albany, as the State capital, 
was also auspicious for our legislative work, 

172 



1 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

especially during the " Personal Liberty " era, 
when we sought State protection for fugitives 
from slavery after the enactment of the infam- 
ous Fugitive Slave Law. Annual State Anti- 
Slavery Conventions were held in Albany for 
several successive years, with addresses at 
different times by representative speakers, 
among whom were Mr. Garrison, Wendell 
Phillips, Rev. Samuel J. May, Parker Pillsbury, 
the Fosters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Charles 
Lenox Remond, Rev. Beriah Green, Rev. A. 
D. Mayo, and others. These we regarded as 
auspicious occasions for reaching and interest- 
inof the legfislators of the State, some of whom 
were generally in attendance, and through 
them the general public. 

The anti-slavery centre of Western New 
York was the city of Rochester. Residing 
there, beside relatives and personal friends of 
mine, to whom I have already referred, were 
a group of earnest, faithful abolitionists, in- 
cluding Isaac and Amy Post, (brother of 
Joseph Post, of Long Island,) Frederick 
Douglass, William R. and Mary Hallowell, 

173 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Edmund and Sarah Willis, Benjamin and 
Sarah Fish, Giles B. Stebbins and Catharine 
A. F. Stebbins, Daniel and Lucy Anthony, 
(the father and mother of Susan B. Anthony,) 
Elias and Rhoda De Garmo, and others, all 
deeply interested in, and valuable helpers of, 
the anti-slavery, and other reforms. 

It was during the autumn of 1858, when I 
was not quite equal in health to continuous 
anti-slavery campaigning, that, at the invita- 
tion of Susan B. Anthony, I passed the 
months of September and October in Roch- 
ester, and gave, in the Unitarian Church, a 
series of eight discourses upon liberal Christ- 
ianity, in its various practical aspects. The 
details were efficiently arranged by Miss 
Anthony. 

It was during the winter of 1860-61, after 
the election of Lincoln, and before his inaug- 
uration as President of the United States, 
that our anti-slavery conventions in the larger 
cities, Buffalo, Rochester, Auburn, Syracuse, 
Utica and Albany, were much disturbed by 
mobs. I have previously referred to our 

174 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

experience in Syracuse. The convention at 
Buffalo I was unable to attend, but assisted 
in the others. This unexpected and rather 
surprising revival of mob violence against 
the abolitionists was not confined to our 
conventions in New York, but developed also 
in Boston, against Wendell Phillips, who was 
speaking in Music Hall, and in other localities 
wherein abolitionists were announced to speak. 
It seemed in our New York experience as 
thouo-h the mobs in the several cities mio-ht 
have a common source of inspiration and 
direction. In Auburn we were driven from 
our hall by the suffocating fumes of red pep- 
per thrown by the miscreants upon a hot 
stove. I happened to be upon the platform 
making an address at the time and could not 
get relief as soon as others who rushed quick- 
ly to open windows and doors. Suddenly it 
seemed as though a thousand needle points 
were penetrating my throat, which was for a 
time seriously affected, and with threatened 
loss of voice. At Utica we were not allowed 
by the mob to enter the hall, which had been 

175 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

engaged for our convention ; and, as at 
Syracuse, we met in private parlors, by the 
kind invitation of Mr. and Mrs. J. C. De Long. 
A subsequent investigation, by one of our 
Utica friends, disclosed the fact that the 
evening prior to our convention in that city 
a group of men met in a lawyer's office and 
prepared resolutions, which were adopted by 
the mob the following day, and telegraphed 
over the country, by the Associated Press, 
declaring in substance that the people of 
Utica repudiated the abolitionists and Lincoln, 
and that the central figure of that group was 
none other than Horatio Seymour, the well 
known democratic leader, whose home was 
in Utica. It was further ascertained that 
these mobocratic demonstrations against abo- 
litionists in Northern cities at this time were 
part of a scheme of a political organization, 
known as the " Knights of the Golden Circle," 
with headquarters in the South, to create a 
popular revolt against Lincoln, and to prevent 
his inaugaration as President. President 
Lincoln was obliQ^ed, it will be remembered, 

176 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

to make his way incognito through Baltimore 
as he journeyed to Washington. It was also 
a significant fact that the name of Horatio 
Seymour appeared at this very time upon the 
subscription list oi\k\Q. National Anti-Slavery 
Standard, indicating his appreciation of the 
political influence of the movement, though 
quite independent of all partisan politics, 
which it represented. 

These last mobs, with which we were con- 
fronted, proved to be the forerunner of the 
slaveholders' rebellion, which soon after de- 
veloped, and with the end of which, after a 
great expenditure of blood and treasure, came 
the end, as a legalized institution, of slavery 
itself 



177 



CHAPTER VII. 



I HAD the pleasure of knowing John G. 
Whittier, the poet of the anti-slavery reform, 
and of meeting him from time to time during 
the later years of his life. At the time of his 
last visit to New York he called at the office 
of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, of 
which I was then editor, to see me, but, 
much to my regret, I was out and missed his 
call. He was then in feeble health, and left 
a message for me saying : "I would very 
much like to see thee, but I cannot climb 
these three flights of stairs again." During 
his sojourn with friends in Brooklyn, my wife 
and myself, by appointment, called later upon 
him. In general, and in large companies 
especially, he was shy and retiring. On 
this occasion we were alone with him, and, 
seated upon a sofa between us, it gave us the 
coveted opportunity to tell him, face to face, 
how grateful we were for the help some of 
178 




John G. Whittier. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

his consoling words had given us in a time of 
sore bereavement through which we had 
been passing. This seemed to unlock the 
storehouse of memory with him, and as we 
sat together in the evening quiet he told us 
somewhat of his own experiences in life, its 
sorrows and joys, out of which some of the 
poems, which have given so much comfort to 
many, were born. I wish it were possible to 
share this conversation with others. It was. 
as will be readily inferred, an occasion of 
deep interest to us, and very precious in 
memory. 

On another occasion we met him under 
very different circumstances in Boston. It 
was at the time of the visit to the United 
States of Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil. 
The Emperor declined most proffered recep- 
tions and social functions, but he said to a 
friend, Mrs. Agassiz, that there was one whom 
he would be very glad to meet — the Quaker 
poet, John G. Whittier. The Emperor had 
become much interested in Whittier through 
his poetry, some of which he had translated. 

]8i 



^ 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

The problem was how to induce Whittier to 
come to Boston, and to arrano^e for the meet- 
ing. He occasionally visited Rev. and Mrs. 
John T. Sargent, anti-slavery friends, and 
attended in their parlors the unique meetings 
of the Chestnut Street Radical Club, of which 
they were host and hostess. Mrs. Sargent 
had a genius for bringing people together, 
and it was arranged that she would give a 
reception in honor of the Emperor, to which 
Whittier, with Emerson, Longfellow, Holmes, 
Wendell Phillips, Lucy Larcom, and others 
of Boston's, distinguished literati, were in- 
vited. We chanced to be in Boston, and, as 
friends of the Sargents, were privileged to be 
present. When the Emperor arrived he was 
met by the hostess and escorted by her to 
the parlors, which were on the second floor, 
and was introduced to one and another of the 
distinguished company in waiting, but with 
little apparent interest in any, until they 
came to Whittier, for whom he asked and 
whom he oreeted with much enthusiasm, 
folding him in his arms. He then drew him 

182 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

to a seat and engaged most earnestly in con- 
versation with him till his departure, giving 
relatively little heed to the presence of the 
other distinguished men and women who 
were there also to welcome him. When he 
must needs leave he asked Whittier to ac- 
company him, and arm in arm they made 
their way from the parlors down the stairs, 
parting at the door. As the carriage bore 
him away the Emperor raised his hat and 
gave a parting salute to the house. 

With his shy and shrinking tendency the 
ordeal was a trying one for Whittier, but all 
those present knew and loved him, and much 
appreciated the very marked attention which 
the Emperor had shown him. 

Among the essayists who from time to 
time read papers at the meetings of the 
Chestnut Street Club were Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, John Weiss, David A. Wasson, 
Dr. Bartol, Samuel Longfellow, Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes, Julia Ward Howe, Rev. W. H. 
Channing, Mary Grew, T. W. Higginson, 
Rev. O. B. Frothingham and others. The 



183 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

topics and discussions were sometimes very 
abstract, metaphysical and philosophical. At 
the conclusion of one of these meetings with, 
I think, John Weiss as essayist, much of the 
talk which followed having been peculiarly 
abstract and in the metaphysical clouds, 
Whittier, who sat near my wife and myself, 
as a quiet listener, commented to us upon 
the speculative character of the discussion, 
saying, with a significant twinkle in his eye : 
"I settled those things for myself long ago." 
Mrs. Clafiin, in her " Personal Recollections," 
writes of him as once saying to her : " As I 
was walking across the floor at the Radical 
Club a woman stopped me in the middle of 
the parlor among all the folks and said, ' I've 
long wished to see you, Mr. Whittier, to ask 
you what you thought of the subjective and 
objective.' Why, I thought the woman was 
crazy, and I said ' I don't know anything 
about either of 'em.' " 

At one of the meetings of the Club, when 
Mary Grew, of Philadelphia, was to read a 
paper upon " Essential Christianity," Whit- 

184 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

tier, who was closely associated with her in 
anti-slavery work during the period of his 
editorship of the Pennsylvania Freeman in 
Philadelphia, was invited and expected, but 
was unable to be present and sent, with his 
apology for his absence, the following lines : 

HOW MARY GREW. 

With wisdom far beyond her years, 
And graver than her wondering peers, 
So strong, so mild, combining still 
The tender heart and queenly will. 
To conscience and to duty true, 
So, up from childhood, Mary Grew! 

Then, in her gracious womanhood 
She gave her days to doing good. 
She dared the scornful laugh of men, 
The hounding mob, the slanderer's pen. 
She did the work she found to do, 
A Christian heroine, Mary Grew ! 

The freed slave thanks her; blessing comes 
To her from women's weary homes. 
The wronged and erring find in her 
Their censor mild and comforter. 
The world were safe if but a few 
Could grow in grace as Mary Grew! 

i8; 



PERSONAL REMINISCEXCES. 

So, New Year's Eve, I sit and say, 
By this low wood-fire, ashen gray ; 
Just wishing, as the night shuts down, 
That I could hear in Boston town, 
In pleasant Chestnut Avenue, 
From her own lips how Mary Grew! 

And hear her graceful hostess tell 

The silver voiced oracle 

Who lately through her parlors spoke 

As through Dodona's sacred oak, 

A wiser truth than any told 

By Sappho's lips of ruddy gold, — 

The way to make the world anew. 

Is just to grow — as Mary Grew! 

In response to an invitation to another of 
these Club gatherings, at which Lucretia 
Mott, and Mary Carpenter, of England, were 
to be present, and which he was unable to 
attend, Whittier wrote the following : 

Amesbury, Wednesday Eve. 
My dear Mrs. Sargent: 

Few stronger inducements could be held out to 
me than that in thy invitation to meet Lucretia 
Mott and Mary Carpenter. But I do not see that 
I can possibly go to Boston this week. None the 
less do I thank thee, my dear friend, for thinking 
of me in connection with this visit. 



i86 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

My love to Lucretia Mott, and tell her I have 
never forgotten the kind welcome and generous 
sympathy she gave the young abolitionist at a time 
when he found small favor with his "orthodox" 
brethren. What a change she and I have lived to 
see! I hope to meet Miss Carpenter before she 
leaves us. For this and all thy kindness in times 
past, believe me gratefully, 

Thy friend, 

John G. Whittier. 

On still another occasion we were guests 
of the Sargents, with Whittier, at a social 
tea, when Robert Dale Owen was also pres- 
ent, wath Mrs. Mattie Griffith Browne, and a 
few others, and the subject of spiritualism 
was under consideration — a subject in which 
Mr. Owen was greatly interested, and in 
which he was desirous especially of interesting 
Whittier. It w^as at a time when the alleged 
"materialization" of spirits was claiming 
much attention. Mr. Owen gave us an ac- 
count of his own experience, and of some 
very remarkable spirit appearances. Whittier 
listened to his friend attentively, but inclined 
to be incredulous and skeptical, with every 
now and then an alert query : " Is thee sure 

1S7 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

there was no door here, and no opening 
there ? " Of course he had no doubt as to 
immortality itself. In " Snow Bound " he 
affirms ; 

" Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, 
(Since He who knows our need is just,) 
That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 
Alas for him who never sees 
The stars shine through his cypress trees! 
Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, 
Nor looks to see the breaking day 
Across the mournful marbles play! 
Who have not learned, in hours of faith, 
The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That Life is ever lord of Death, 
And Love can never lose its own ! " 

It was as the Abolitionist and Poet that 
Whittier was most widely known to the gen- 
eral public. But his was an influential voice 
also in behalf of peace, temperance, the en- 
franchisement of women, prison reform and 
many humane interests. He was also an 
able, vigorous prose writer. His first import- 
ant pamphlet, in 1833, which was entitled, 
"Justice and Expediency; or Slavery Con- 
sidered with a view to its Rightful and 

188 



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x^ 










• , J 



Charles Sumner. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Effectual Remedy, Abolition," cost him nearly 
a year's earning-s to print and distribute, 
besides the labor of its preparation. It was 
with a wisdom born of his own experience 
that, late in life, he counselled a young man 
who sought his advice : " Ally thyself early 
with some Qrreat cause." 

Throughout his own life it was pre-emi- 
nently his aim 

— "to render less 
The sum of human wretchedness." 

I was in the way of meeting Charles Sum- 
ner from time to time, and very pleasantly, in 
New York and Washington, during the latter 
part of my anti -slavery labors. I had the 
pleasure of sending him many petitions in 
behalf of his Personal Liberty measures in 
the Senate, a co-operation which he seemed 
much to appreciate. In his journeying to 
and fro between Boston and Washington I 
had occasional calls from him at the office of 
the National Anti-Slavery Standard. It 
was my privilege to pass with him, by ap- 

191 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

pointment, in his own house, in Washington, 
now a part of the ArHngton Hotel, the last 
evening before he was prostrated by an illness 
which soon culminated in his death. 

He told me durinof our conversation that 
evening that it was his purpose, after his then 
pending measures in the interest of the 
colored people were disposed of, to devote 
the remainder of his public life to the promo- 
tion of International Arbitration. In his 
great lecture, entitled "The Duel between 
France and Germany," at the time of the 
Franco- Prussian war, w^hich he delivered to 
immense audiences in Boston, and elsewhere, 
which I had the pleasure of hearing in New 
York, and which was subsequently published 
in a pamphlet still of great value for present 
use, he made a masterly plea for disarmament 
and the reduction of national armies to the 
standard only of ordinary police requirement. 
He declared : " An army is a despotism ; mili- 
tary service is a bondage ; nor can the passion 
for arms be reconciled with a true civilization ; " 
and, again: " Letthe war system be abolished, 

192 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

and, in the glory of this consummation, how 
vulear all that comes from battle ! '•' '•■ * 
Add peace to liberty, 

"And with that virtue every virtue lives." 

The day following my last evening with 
him, he was in his seat in the United States 
Senate, his last in that bod}-, but he took no 
public part in its proceedings, beyond his 
sonorous "aye," given on a yea and nay 
vote for a bill introduced at my own request, 
in behalf of the National Temperance Society, 
to provide for a National Commission of 
Inquiry concerning the Alcoholic Liquor 
Traffic. That " aye " for my measure proved 
to be his last official, public word in the 
Senate. 

The college mate and life long friend of 
Wendell Phillips, though he never joined the 
abolitionists as one of them, he was always in 
co-operative relations with them in his private 
and public life, and used playfully to boast 
that he was a year ahead of Mr. Phillips in 
subscribing for Mr. Garrison's Liberator. 

193 



PERSONA L REMINISCENCES. 

Lydia Maria Child was the very intimate 
friend of both Whittier and Sumner, as also 
of Garrison and Phillips. She was another 
also w^ho brouofht to the service of the anti- 
slavery movement a rare type of intellectual 
culture and ability, and who sacrificed a bril- 
liant literary reputation upon the altar of the 
slave's redemption. I did not know her 
personally in the earlier period, at the time 
of her greatest anti-slavery activity, but 
occasionally met her, and her beloved and 
honored husband, David Lee Child, during- 
the latter years of the conflict. I was espec- 
ially grateful to her for very kind and helpful 
co-operation during my editorship of the 
National Anti-Slavery Standaj'd, to which 
she made valuable contributions, sometimes 
over her own name and sometimes impersonal. 
Meanwhile she was doing her household work 
with her own hands. On one occasion she 
wrote : 

Friend Powell: 

I am afraid you have been thinking I have 
forgotten The Standard. But it is not so. I have 

I'M 




L. Maria Child. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

been half crazed and excessively tired with house- 
cleaning and repairing, without any one to help 
my two old hands; everybody but myself being 
too genteel to work in these days. 

Yours truly, 

L. M. Child. 



At another time she wrote : 

" I have been intending for some weeks to send 
you an article, but I have been much hurried with 
spring work; and, to tell the truth, I do above all 
things, hate to write. I had rather wash, scour, 
do any thing, than to touch a pen." 

In another letter accompanying an article 
for The Standard, she said : 

" I have also written a paragraph for The Inde- 
pendent entitXeA "The Importance of One Vote," 
which you can copy, if you think it worth while to 
pull so small a string for Grant's election. 

" To tell you the truth, I am scared half to death 
for fear those re-constructed States will make 
Seymour President." 

Her three volumes, entitled " Progress of 
Religious Ideas," are a contribution to histor- 
ical religious literature, of permanent value 
197 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

representintr profound thought and immense 
research. 

These suggestive sentences are from her 
letters : 

" The God ivithin us is the God we really believe 

in, whatever we may have learned in catechisms 

and creeds." 

* 

"The outward is but a seeming and a show; 
the inward alone is permanent and real." 

* 
* * 

"In our pitiful anxiety how we shall appear 
before men, we forget how we appear before 
angels," 

She left precise directions as to her funeral, 
that it should be private and inexpensive, 
and that she should be laid beside her " dear 

old mate," with whom, as she said to 

she " did so long to have a talk it seemed as 
though she could not wait." 

She directed these words to be put on her 
gravestone : 

"You call us dead; we are not dead; we are 
only truly living now." 

199 



MEMORANDA OF THE UNWRITTEN 
CHAPTERS. 



[In the memoranda left, the unwritten 
chapters are not even sketched. But it 
seems due to the writer's g-enerous purpose, 
that this barely hinted outline should be 
o-iven, of work and workers for Temperance; 
for the Indians ; for Prison Reform ; for the 
Equal Rights of Women ; for Peace and 
Arbitration ; and in behalf of Purity.] 

Emerson, John Brown, George L. Stearns, 
George W. Julian, Rev. Samuel May, Lucy Stone, 
Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Gerrit Smith, 
Frederick Douglass, Rev. Beriah Green, Parker 
Pillsbury, Charles C. Burleigh, Oliver Johnson, 
Giles B. Stebbins. 



Julia Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore, Abby 
Hopper Gibbons, Elizabeth Gay, Dr. Elizabeth 
Blackwell, Dr. Emily Blackwell, Louisa M. Alcott. 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

National Standard 1872. Indian Civilization- 
Journey to San Francisco— Chicago Fire— Barclay 
White— Chinese. 

First Trip to Europe 1S73— International Prison 
Congress. Drink Episode — Cardinal Manning- 
Mr. Raper and :\Ir. Barker, Sir Wilfred Lawson 
and Exeter Hall. Continental Trip— Mrs. Butler 
— Liverpool. 

Standard and National Temperance Advocate, 
Editorship and Secretary. Wm. E. Dodge, J. N. 
Stearns, Gen. Neal Dow, Dr. Cuyler, Miss Willard, 
Dr. Richardson, Dr. Lees, Mr. Rae, Mrs. Lucas. 
Congress, Commission of Inquiry, Senator Frye, 
:Mr. Dingley, Joseph D. Taylor. National Pro- 
hibitory Amendment. Canon Wilberforce, Arch- 
bishop Farrar, Gen. Fisk, Ramabai. 

New York Committee State Regulation of Vice. 
H. J. Wilson, M. P., and Rev. J. P. Gledstone. 
Second European Trip 1877— First International 
Congress and Federation. Canon and Mrs. Butler, 
Mr. Stansfeld, Sir Harcourt Johnstone, Prof. 
Stuart, Prof. Humbert, M. Henri Pierson, Madame 
De Morsier, Mme. De Gingins, George Gillet, 
Henry Richard, Maria Richardson. Reformation 
Hall— Mrs. Butler, Eliza Wigham and Mrs. Howe, 
Dr. Blackwell. 



201 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Third European Trip 1883. — The Hague. Mrs. 
Butler, Count and Countess Hogendorp, Madame 
Klerck. Socialism — the King — Motley Palace. 



Fourth European Trip — Fourth International 
Congress — London 1886. Mr. Stead, M. De 
Laveleye. Toynbee Hall — Dr. Nevins, Mr. Minod. 



Fifth European Trip — Fifth Congress. Geneva 
1889. Paris Exposition — Absence of Mrs. Butler. 
Canon Butler died March 14, 1890, in his 71st year. 
Mrs. Ballington Booth and the Servia. 



Sixth European Trip — Sixth Triennial Congress 
— 1 89 1 at Brussels, Belgium. Mrs. Butler and 
others. 



World's Congress on Social Purity. Chicago — 
Archbishop Ireland, Mr. Gerry, Father Cleary, 
Judge Bonney, Mr. De Watteville, Mrs. Liver- 
more, Rev. Anna Garlin Spencer. 



Seventh European Trip — London, July 1894 — 
Rosebery, Salisbury, Devonshire, etc. 



National Purity Congress, Baltimore, Md. , 
October, 1895 — First National — Characterize. 



I 



PERSONAL REMINISCENCES. 

Rev. Dr. McVickar, Rev. Dr. Lewis, Dr. Emily 
and Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell— Woman's Medical 
College, Rev. Dr. Sabine, Dr. J. H. Kellogg and 
others. 



Eighth European Trip— Congress at Berne, 
1896. Birmingham Conference. Visit at the 
Clarks' at Street— John Bright. 



Ninth European Trip — London 1898 — Interna- 
tional Congress. Social Purity Alliance. Arch- 
deacon of London. National Vigilance Association. 
Mr. Stead. Canon Rawnsley, English Lakes. 



AARON M. POWELL. 



This form laid low, in beautiful ripe manliness ? 
This deep-toned, gentle voice with sweet com- 
pelling power to persuade 
Hushed from its labor ? 
This matchless tact, grown strong by love and 

service. 
Yet fine and sensitive to handle God's most 
delicate work 
Lost to humanity's cause ? 
This gentleness and courage so nobly joined, they 

seemed a seamless garment 
Worn with all dignity and kindliness — 
All these rich, ripe graces lost to God's service ? 

Not so! In other, fairer fields he still shall 

serve. 
Our Father ! We question not thy wisdom 
and thy love ; 
We only plead, " Anoint unto thy service here 
Others thy servants. 

With a like strength, fidelity, and untiring love." 

Anna Canby Janney. 



?o4 




Aaron M. Powell. 




Anna Rice Powell. 



IN MEMORIAM. 



With the message of assured faith in the 
soul's continued life, which was left by Lydia 
Maria Child for record upon her tombstone, 
my brother laid down his pen, for a temporary 
absence in Philadelphia, to attend the Yearly 
Meeting- of the Religious Society of Friends, 
held at Fifteenth and Race Streets. They 
were the last words of his writing in this 
volume. If he had been permitted to choose 
"last words" — words to be imprinted with 
the indelible touch that only death's seal can 
give, perhaps there are no words that could 
have spoken more directly to the hearts of 
those sore-stricken by his departure. For 
they know that for him to " truh' live " is to 
pour out his heart of love, not only upon 
those nearest and dearest to him, but upon 
the work also to which he had felt himself 
called. They may well believe that, if it be 
given to the liberated spirit not only to enter 
209 



LY MEMORIAM. 

into the joys of the faithful, but to be faithful 
still to all its past, then he will still minister 
to his own, and will labor on in the fields 
where laborers are few. 

On the morning of Seventh day, Fifth 
month, 13, 1899, with his wife, Anna Rice 
Powell, he left his home in Plainfield, N. J., 
and arrived in Philadelphia in time for a part 
only of the morning session of the meeting 
of Ministers and Elders. The intermission 
between the morning and the afternoon 
sessions, was spent in happy intercourse with 
their sister, planning, among other things, for 
a quiet opportunity to read together the 
finished chapters of the '* Reminiscences." 
He remarked " I shall have to go slowly this 
week ; " and yet, he seemed not less vigorous 
than at any time during the last two years — 
years really of unacknowledged invalidism. 
When it was time for the afternoon session 
to begin, they returned to the meeting house, 
where he was invited to a seat with minister- 
ine Friends. He left his wife and sister with 
the words " I am sorry to be separated from 



IN MEMORIAM. 

you two!" Near the close of the meeting, 
during which there had been much expression 
of unity with the presence by courtesy, of 
Friends from the far West and from England, 
he rose and said: " It has been very grati- 
fying to me to observe in the portion of the 
morning session which I was privileged to 
attend, and again this afternoon, the tendency 
to a spirit of unification among Friends. We 
each have to live a life "—He ceased speak- 
ing, and was observed to be falling forward. 
A^'friend facing him and near him, instantly 
supported him ; and hands as kind as broth- 
ers' hands could be, laid him upon the seat 
from which he had risen, and used every 
means for his restoration. A physician pres- 
ent in the meeting, pronounced further efforts 
unavailing,— the spirit had departed. The 
solemn silence was presently broken by the 
concluding minute of the clerk; and Friends 
quietly passed away from the meeting house. 
The body rested until Second day morning, 
in the home of Samuel and Sarah Ash whose 
hospitality he had many times enjoyed. On 



IN MEMORIAM. 

First day evening, a few friends gathered 
about the beloved form whose face, beautiful 
to look upon, seemed to have the light of the 
Heavenly life upon it. One and another of 
the dear friends, those of his own ofeneration, 
and others — young men and women spoke 
words of love ; and told how this life had 
entered into their own, and opened noble 
ideals to them, and urged to their attainment. 
That the young should bear testimony that 
hfe had been teacher and guide to them ; and 
should pledge themselves to his unfinished 
work, — what sweeter compensation could 
there be, for a life of unselfish service ! 

On the following day the journey was 
made to Ghent, New York, the old home in 
the Hudson River Valley, now the home of 
the younger brother, George T. Powell. On 
Third day afternoon, relatives, friends and 
neiofhbors fathered at the homestead for the 
funeral service. Among the Friends present, 
of the New York Yearly Meeting, were 
Robert S. Haviland, Charles M. Robinson, 
William and Anna Jackson, John William 

212 



IN MEMO RI AM. 

Hutchinson, Elias Underbill, Tacie P. Willets, 
Henry Wilbur and Franklin T. Carpenter. 
Of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, Mary 
Travilla and Isaac Roberts were in attend- 
ance. Tender words of prayer and thanks- 
giving were spoken, and again, loving 
testimony was borne to the purity and 
faithfulness and stimulating power of the life 
just passed from our sight. Henry G. Adams 
of Plainfield, N. J., spoke in behalf, not only 
of the Friends of Plainfield whose meeting 
will miss the helpful presence, but for the 
city mourning the loss of a valued citizen. 
Isaac Roberts said in part : 

" If the great purpose of life is the development 
of character through noble service, then how can 
any life be more successful than his has been? If, 
as has been well said, ' there is but one failure, 
and that is, not to be true to the best one knows,' 
then success must be found in fidelity to the Truth 
as revealed to him. If the fellowship of great 
work, the companionship of noble thoughts, the 
consciousness of effective work in great causes, if 
these constitute happiness, how truly happy his 
life has been. If quiet contentment, peace, and 
full soul-communion in the home life; if silent 

213 



IN MEMORIAM. 

communion with the Holy Spirit both in work and 
worship, — if these constitute blessedness, how truly 
blessed his life has been, and how confident we 
may be that life has simply known transition, a 
happy change from loving service here, to higher, 
holier service in the life beyond, ' the life that is 
life indeed.' 

"As we contemplate the life and character of 
our friend so lately with us, now so greatly blessed, 
the thought that Whittier expressed in contem- 
plating the life and character of John Woolman 
comes before us; we have ' felt awed and solemn- 
ized by the presence of a serene and beautiful 
spirit, redeemed of the Lord from all selfishness, 
and we have been made grateful for the ability to 
recognize and the disposition to love him;' and we 
recall, too, the words which our Quaker poet 
addressed to one of his well known friends, who, 
like our friend, was blessed by a quick translation 
from work to reward : 

*' As a guest who may not stay 
Long and sad farewells to say, 
Glides with smiling face away, 

Of the sweefness and the zest, 
Of thy happy life possessed, 
Thou hast left us at thy best. 

Now that thou hast gone away, 
What remains of one to say 
Who was open as the day ? 



14 



IN MEMORIAM. 

Safe thou art on every side, 
Friendship nothing finds to hide, 
Love's demand is satisfied. 

Keep for us, dear friend, where'er 
Thou art waiting, all that here 
Made thy earthly presence dear. 

And when fall our feet, as fell 

Thine, upon the asphodel, 

Let thy dear smile greet us well; 

Proving in a world of bliss 
All we fondly dream in this, — 
Love is one with holiness !" 



The form was laid away in the burial 
o-round of the Friends at Ghent, beside the 
little daughter early deceased, and near his 
parents Townsend and Catharine Macy 
Powell. A noble oak shelters these graves ; 
the " everlasting hills " are about them, and 
the quiet of that beautiful country. 

While the funeral service was in progress 
at Ghent, in Philadelphia the Purity Alliance 
of that city was holding a memorial meeting 
in place of the conference appointed for that 
hour, at which my brother had promised his 

215 



IN MEMO RI AM. 

willingness to speak, assuring the secretary 
that it would be " for no other compensation 
than the joy of doing good." Other memorial 
meetings were held by the Philanthropic 
Committee of the New York Yearly Meeting, 
and by the Friends of his own meeting in 
Plainfield. In these meetings were testi- 
monies tender and true, from his fellow 
workers in many fields, and in different re- 
ligious denominations, to the success of the 
unselfish life. 

His birth-place was Clinton, Dutchess 
County, N. Y. In 1845, when he was thirteen 
years old, his parents removed to Ghent, to 
the farm-home of his mother's girlhood. He 
had the customary life of country boys in 
those days, of farm work in the summer, and 
a few months in the public school in the 
winter. But he was blessed with that best 
inheritance, a hunoferinof and thirstinof mind, 
and the eyes that see. That retired farming 
life was in the midst of great natural beauty, 
with wooded hills close at hand, and beyond 
a fertile valley the outline of the beautiful 

216 



AV MEMORIAM. ^ 

blue Catskills thirty miles away, along the 
western horizon. It might be said of him, 
as of Wordsworth, "Fair seed time had his 
soul," in that season of close intimacy with 
nature, that life of labor simple and sincere. 
The few books of those early years were 
made to yield their utmost treasure to him. 
It was a life very free from incident— no 
record of travel, nor of social gaiety, nor 
exciting recreation ; only the kindly inter- 
course of a Friendly neighborhood to alternate 
with the exactions of daily toil. Even then, 
he was not living to himself alone. He had 
taken into close companionship his only sister, 
enough younger than himself to receive from 
him llmost fatherly care. His own high 
ideals of life and duty, his glimpses of spiritual 
things— he shared them all with her. He 
became her guide ; literally the light of her 
young life ; the object of her passionate de- 
votion. Although she could only follow him 
afar, it was he who gave the direction to her 
life. Some "accents of the Holy Ghost" 
early found their way to his soul and set 

217 



IN MEMORIAM. 

vibrating the chords of aspiration toward all 
that is best in life, — chords that never ceased 
to respond to the touch of the Most High. 

His own record has told how he was 
moved by the appeals for help when there 
were few to help in the labors of the aboli- 
tionists. He has himself related how the visit 
of Stephen and Abby Kelley Foster took him 
away from this quiet country life ; away from 
his cherished plans for college education into 
the arduous missionary life of the anti-slavery 
apostles. This was in 1851. The next ten 
years were given almost wholly to public 
service in the anti-slavery cause. In April 
of 1 86 1 the Ghent home was the happy scene 
of his marriage with Judith Anna Rice of 
Worcester, Mass. As Miss Rice was not 
then in membership with the Religious So- 
ciety of Friends, the laws of Massachusetts 
did not admit of their using the marriage 
ceremony of Friends. For this reason the 
marriaofe was celebrated at Ghent. In the 
summer of 1863 the mob spirit was rampant 
in New York City. This was the summer in 

218 




Aaron M. Powell, 
at the age of 17, and his sister. 



IX MEMORIAM. 

which the house of James and Abby Hopper 
Gibbons was attacked by an angr)- " copper- 
head " mob, because it was thought to be the 
home of Horace Greeley: and furniture, 
books and clothing all destroyed. The same 
spirit more or less infected the countr\-. My 
brother was the conspicuous object ot " cop- 
perhead " hatred in the Hudson River \'alley; 
and the discovered plotting against his lite 
made it seem wise for himself and his w4fe to 
leave Ghent for a time. 

In Februar)- of 1864 another happy tie was 
formed with the old home, in the binh of 
their daughter Lizzie Rice Powell. But the 
claims of the anti-slaver\- work were still 
strong upon him. and New York Cit\- became 
their residence, to be exchanged in iSSo tor 
Plainheld, New Jersey. His marriage was a 
relation in which his joys were multiplied, his 
anxieties di\-ided — a relation which brought 
him sympathetic companionship in all his 
labors. The mob spirit cannot pre\-ail against 
a home whose law is love and co-operation ; 
the man whose best ideals are shared by his 



IN MEMORIAM. 

wife is fortified for the most arduous work 
appointed to him. This was the blessedness 
of my brother's lot. 

The death of their precious daughter just 
before the Christmas day of 1867, sweet sor- 
row though it was, with no drop of bitterness 
in it, was a very sore sorrow ; and for a time 
it seemed that in her death all joy had died. 
One whose heart was wrapped up in the little 
girl, writing of her in 1866, said : 

" How I wish you could see her, she is so lovely! 
Her golden hair, blue eyes, fair skin and pink 
cheeks, make her as pretty as a little girl can be, 
and her ways are very charming. The mother 
instinct is strongly developed in her; and she is 
happy with her baby, be it handkerchief, shawl or 
dolly." 

And again in January, 1868 : 

" Did I write of the sweet visit I had with her 
in October? It was one of those weeks of perfect 
weather, and she was out with me a good deal. 
One day we were on Broadway, and she held my 
finger and led me at 'her own sweet will;' and at 
every window of toys or pictures we stopped to 
gaze as long as she wished. Passers by turned to 



IN MEMORIAM. 

look again at her radiant little face. It was the 
first time I had realized that she was growing up to 
be a companion for me; and I was so proud and 
happy that day, that she almost belonged to me!" 

The sorely stricken parents bowed to the 
wave of sorrow as it passed over them ; then 
rose up to do, in patience and trust, the work 
criven them to do. The ministry of love that 
could not pour itself out upon the sweet, 
invisible presence with them all these years, 
has been the blessing of many a young soul 
struo-o-line with the problems of life ; and the 
childless home has been made a place of 
helpful and happy resort for the young. 

One young man to whom my brother's 
heart was closely drawn by kindred interests, 
sends the message : 

"There are very few men for whom I had as 
warm a personal affection. He was so young in 
his sympathies that we felt he was a real comrade; 
and a comrade whose presence and association was 
an inspiring incentive to all that was best in us. " 

Another, with whom he has had intimate 
business relations, writes : 



IN MEMORIAM. 

" All his friends will share in my grief, since all 
who knew him must have loved him. He was 
indeed a man whose upright life and pure character 
challenged the admiration of all. To me he has 
been conspicuously a model upon which I sought 
to mould my own actions. " 

The nineteen busy years fived in Plainfield 
have had much happiness in them. Resi- 
dence in New York for a period of fifteen 
years gave very keen zest to the satisfaction 
of coming into ownership of a modest home 
in the embowered city of Plainfield. He felt 
that it added years to his life among us, that 
he could leave the towering walls and the 
ceaseless stir and pressure of the great me- 
tropolis ; and after a comfortable railroad 
journey of three-quarters of an hour, with the 
refreshment in summer of the ferry, and the 
ever changing beauty of the bay, come to the 
quiet of his own home. Green grass and 
lily of the valley, and cherry tree and maples 
never ministered of their freshness, fragrance 
and shadows to more grateful appreciation. 
And more than this : the strangers found 
themselves warmly welcomed to the con- 

224 



IN MEMO RI AM. 

genial company of Friends whose meetings 
in the ancient meeting house (1788) on 
Watchung Avenue it was their pleasure to 
attend and support with their co-operation. 
The Young Friends' Association of this Meet- 
ing would bear testimony that my brother's 
help to them has been such as not to leave 
them helpless now he is gone ; but such as 
to call out their own power to do, and to go 
forward. Most pleasant social relations with 
their townspeople were soon established. 
Their contribution to the social life of Plain- 
field is suesrested in the following^ letter from 
one of their young friends : 

' ' I associate you and Mr. Powell with so much 
that has been happy and inspiring in my life. 
How often I have looked back to the cosy evenings 
at your house when you invited some interesting 
personality from the great world (Miss Dodge and 
others), and then shared the pleasure with as many 
others as your little home would accommodate. 
You don't know how many times I have thought 
of, and spoken of those evenings to my friends, 
as, to me, the ideal of hospitality — the privilege of 
bringing people together under conditions which 
would help to make life broader and nobler for them ; 

225 



IN MEMORIAM. 

and you and Mr. Powell receiving so cordially, 
putting every guest at ease and making the occasion 
one of rare privilege. That is the way in which I 
think oftenest of you and Mr. Powell; though I 
know these were but the relaxations of a life of 
noble, unselfish endeavor. I think too of the 
interest you both took in all the young life of 
Plainfield, sharing our pleasures with keenest 
sympathy, and I know there are now many of us 
who belonged to the younger set, as well as those 
of a later day, who think of you with loving 
sympathy, and of Mr. Powell's beautiful life with 
gratitude." 



His active co-operation was given, as far 
as the limitations of health allowed, to the 
varied interests of the town. Sometimes his 
helping hand was needed in the formation of 
a Boys' Club ; again he would be asked to 
serve on the committee of award of the medal 
for the best essay writing in the High School. 
The workers for Temperance, and the strug- 
gling Woman's Suffrage Club had such help 
from him as his physical strength permitted. 
A most kind recognition of his work is given 
in the following extract from a letter from a 
committee of the Plainfield Ministers' Asso- 

226 



IN MEMORIAM. 

ciation, signed by Rev. E. M. Rodman, Rev. 
D. J. Yerkes and Rev. Wm. R. Richards : 

"In carrying- out the duty assigned us, we desire 
to make note of our sincere admiration of the life 
and work of Mr. Powell, which made him so well 
known and so justly esteemed in this country and 
in every land where the friends of God and of man 
are laboring for the bettermen t of mankind. Every 
association of such laborers sought, and never 
sought in vain, your husband's assistance." 

Another member of this Association, Rev. 
A. H. Lewis, who had united with him in 
much personal service in the work for Purity, 
wTites in a private letter : 

"The loss to me, personally, is almost as keen 
as though he had been my brother, after the flesh. 
If my engagements could be put aside, in justice 
to my public work, I would be at the burial; and 
yet Aaron is not buried. The house in which he 
lived has fallen; he has entered into the 'house 
not made with hands.' This I know. It must be 
that we go hence and leave the work which God 
has given us; but in his case I do not see who can 
take the work he leaves. * * * His life is 
already a permanent factor in the spiritual history 
of the world, nay, of the universe. What he has 
done for right and righteousness can never be 

2 2 7 



IN MEMORIAL!. 

undone, and in the not too far ofE home coming 
there will be found over against his name on the 
records, such numberless things done for God, and 
humanity, and truth, and justice, and righteous- 
ness and purity, as this world has not been able to 
understand, much less to appreciate. " 

The last Sabbath in the unbroken home 
was gladdened by the company of a party of 
young friends from New York. One of these 
writes : 

'* My last picture is of the two, so truly one in 
spirit, as they stood on the porch of their hospitable 
home, and waved that sweet adieu that seemed to 
us a benediction. I can never forget those two 
happy, helpful days." 

It became the motive of my brother's life 
to make better conditions for the young; to 
be a co-worker with God for the welfare of his 
little children. After negro slavery was le- 
gally abolished, he devoted himself for twenty- 
one years to editorial work upon the National 
TeTfiperance Advocate, and in response to 
many appeals for public service in this cause. 
The labors of Mrs. Butler and her associates 

228 



/.V MEMO RI AM. 

were early brought to his notice. This work 
for the safety of the young, both young men 
and maidens, touched the very tenderest 
chords of his soul. Here again were " fields 
white for the harvest" with few laborers to 
take up the painful, difficult task. Here were 
"New Abolitionists" appealing to him for 
help. He made their cause his own, and the 
last years of his life were given up to it with 
complete consecration. 

The writing of these Reminiscences was 
undertaken during the last year, at the re- 
peated suggestion of friends who felt that 
there must be much of permanent interest 
and value in the recollections of such a life, 
intimately associated as it had been with men 
and women who left their impress upon their 
times, and devoted as it had been to the 
furtherance of great reforms. As my brother 
progressed with the writing, he found it most 
interesting and absorbing. There was much 
in the retrospect that was of necessity sad- 
dening ; but there was also the glow of 
enthusiasm awakened by living again, in 

229 



IN MEMORIAM. 

memory, with the great souls whom he has 
pictured with sincere and sympathetic hand. 
The record of the labors of the past, looked 
at for the first time, as a whole, was a surprise 
to him. And he loved to bear the testimony, 
as many others have done, that whatever he 
had been able to do for the anti-slavery 
cause, it had done immeasurably more for 
him! More than once he remarked, " I hope 
I shall live to finish this book !" This was 
not to be. The part he has written covers 
hardly more than half his years. It is deeply 
to be regretted that we cannot have from his 
own hand the history of the three decades 
that he has barely touched upon ; and the 
recognition that it was in his heart to give, 
of the invaluable services of his co-workers. 

It is not possible to give any adequate 
summary of my brother's work in the Temp- 
erance cause. " Twenty-one years of editorial 
work " can hardly convey to those not 
experienced in this exacting calling, an idea 
of its demands. Nor can any complete 
record be given of his public speaking on 

230 



IN MEMORIAM. 

this subject, in this country and in England. 
Very few manuscript addresses are left, be- 
cause it was his method to prepare an outline 
of the thought to be presented, with only the 
heads for reference in speaking. At a public 
welcome extended to him in 1883 by a com- 
mittee of the London Auxiliary of the United 
Kingdom Alliance for the Legislative Sup- 
pression of the Liquor Traffic, the following 
resolution was moved by the Rev. Dr. Burns: 

"That this meeting of Temperance Reformers, 
assembled on the invitation of the committee of the 
London Auxiliary of the Alliance, hereby extends 
a cordial and fraternal welcome to A. M. Powell, 
Esq., and Mrs. Powell, of New York, whose tem- 
perance work in the United States they desire to 
recognize with high regard and approbation; and 
they further avail themselves of this occasion to 
convey, through Mr. Powell, to the American Na- 
tional Temperance Society an expression of their 
deep and growing interest in the progress of tem- 
perance reform in every part of that great Repub- 
lic to which the world is indebted for the origin of 
the temperance movement of modem times. 

"Mr. Robert Rae, of the National Temperance 
League, was asked to support the resolution. He 
said he knew somewhat of the temperance work of 
Mr. Powell on the other side of the Atlantic. Mr. 



IN MEMORIAM. 

Powell was an all-round man, and there was no 
g-entleman he met when he was in America two 
years ago who seemed to him to possess such a 
thorough knowledge of the position of the tempe- 
rance movement all over the United States, and he 
might add, all over the world. He (Mr. Rae) was 
surprised to find he understood so thoroughly what 
we were doing on this side of the water. We often 
had occasion to consult him about temperance in 
the United States and never found him wanting in 
information upon any such point." 

He has referred to his last interview with 
Senator Sumner in reo^ard to securinof a 
Congressional Commission of Inquiry in which 
he was deeply interested. He was called to 
Washington many times to appear before the 
committees having this subject in charge. 
His concern that the temperance question 
should have broadest and most statesmanlike 
consideration is expressed in the closing 
words of one of his public addresses : 

"The temperance reform has many phases. 
Each is important. Its national aspect is funda- 
mental. The sovereignty of the nation is supreme. 
For state, municipal, and local temperance pro- 
gress, it is of vital moment that the national 

232 



IN MEM OKI AM. 

revenue copartnership with brewers, distillers and 
liquor sellers be dissolved. While the ' rumseller 
is the subject of common denunciation, it must be 
borne in mind that the consenting citizen, under 
the national, as under the state governments, must 
needs share his responsibility for the evil traffic. 

-To achieve ultimate complete success, temp- 
erance work must be not only thorough m detail, 
but comprehensive in its scope. Its -^S^;^^^^' !.^ 
all its aspects, is indeed great, but with Gods 
blessing and the fidelity of philanthropic. Christian 
n.en and women, it is destined to triumph, our 
beloved country to be rescued from the destructive 
plague of alcoholism, the nation to stand forth 
redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled. 

He visited Europe for the first time in the 
summer of 1872. He was appointed by the 
National Committee of the United States, a 
member of the International Prison Congress 
held in London ; and he was also the bearer 
of a memorial adopted by the Representative 
Committee of the New York Yearly Meetmg 
of Friends, upon the subject of Capital Pun- 
ishment. He was accompanied by Aaron C. 
Macy of Hudson, N. Y., the uncle whose 
name he bears. Writing in a private letter 
of this Congress, he says: 
233 



IN MEMO RI AM. 

'* The International Prison Congress has finished 
its labors, and adjourned an hour ago. (July 13, 
1872.) What it has done, has been as a whole, 
very well done, as you will see by the summary of 
propositions which I will send you a steamer later. 
But on Intemperance, as related to crime and the 
death penalty, it has been wholly inadequate. I 
have to-day had in the Congress, what in anti- 
slavery days would have been termed a ' real fight ' 
to get the Congress to prolong its sessions two days, 
and discuss properly those two vital subjects. I 
did not expect to accomplish it, but I did succeed 
in placing upon the managers the responsibility of 
declining to entertain those topics." 

Three days later he adds concerning' this 
episode : 

" My effort was not in vain. I am assured that 
what I said was felt by all, and sympathized with 
by many. I received yesterday a special invitation 
to visit this evening Archbishop Manning, the 
most distinguished Archbishop of London (Roman 
Catholic), who was present in the Congress during 
my effort. He is much interested in the temper- 
ance efforts now in progress here, and I shall 
go for the interview which he invites for this 
evening." 

His testimony in the Prison Congress con- 
cerning the relation of Intemperance to crime 

234 



IN MEMO RI AM. 

brought him many invitations to speak upon 
Temperance, — among them an invitation to 
be one of the speakers with Rev. Theodore 
Cuyler and others at a "Temperance Break- 
fast " at the Crystal Palace, at which he was 
present. While the Prison Congress was in 
session, he assisted also at a meeting of the 
World's Peace Congress, called by Mrc Julia 
Ward Howe, and presided over by Lady 
Bowring. And it was during this stay in 
London that he first attended a meeting on 
Purity. 

The special mission accomplished, of this 
visit to London, there followed several weeks 
of pure recreation, in journeying with our 
uncle through Switzerland and France, and in 
visiting many interesting and picturesque 
parts of Great Britain. The congenial com- 
panionship, and the thrilling interest of the 
new Old World made this a memorable sum- 
mer in my brother's experience. He did not 
foresee that it was the first of many pilgrim- 
ages, the opening of new fields of labor, and 



235 



IN MEMORIAM. 

the beginning of friendships that were for all 
time. 

His active co-operation with Mrs. Butler 
and her co-workers may be said to date from 
the visit of Henry J. Wilson, Esq., and Rev. 
J. P. Gledstone in the summer of 1876. In 
a letter written at the instance of Mrs. Butler 
they are thus introduced: 

"Mrs. Butler, who is at present overwhelmed 
with engagements, has desired me to write to you 
in her name on behalf of the British Continental 
and General Federation, in reference to the trans- 
atlantic mission upon which it has been resolved to 
enter, for the sake of mutual aid and encourage- 
ment in the prosecution of our common cause, of 
which you are, I believe, already informed. The 
two gentlemen who have been selected by the 
Executive Committee of the Federation for the 
work of this mission, namely, Henry J.Wilson, Esq. , 
of Sheffield, and the Rev. J. P. Gledstone, a 
Congregationalist minister of London, have now 
finally arranged (D. V. ) to sail from Liverpool on 
Thursday, the 13th April prox., directing their 
course in the first instance to New York. You 
would be conferring a great favor on these gentle- 
men and on the great International organization 
from whom they derive their credentials if you 
could kindly furnish them with letters of introduc- 

236 



IN MEMORIAM. 

tion to any persons — whether ladies or gentlemen — 
who might be likely to further their object. * * ■> 
It is essential that the two delegates should be as 
definitely and fully informed as possible, imme- 
diately upon their arrival, upon points calculated 
to shape their course in America, as to which they 
have naturally been unable to form any decided plan 
beforehand, * * * Our work upon the continent 
of Europe has already made great progress ; and 
we are therefore the more anxious to stretch out, 
and to grasp the right hand of fellowship with 
those to whom we are bound not only by the 
interests of a common cause, but by the ties of 
consanguinity." 

\^ery shortly after the arrival of Mr. Wilson 
(later, Member of Parliament) and Rev. Mr. 
Gledstone, invitations were sent out in the 
name of a committee, whose chairman was 
Mrs. Abby Hopper Gibbons, for a private 
conference and reception to these gentlemen, 
in the parlors of the New York Infirmary. 
A similar conference and reception was held 
a month later in the parlors of the Isaac T. 
Hopper home. The committee improvised 
at that time to further their work, consisted 
of Mrs. Abby Hopper Gibbons, Emily Black- 
well, M. D., Mrs. Elizabeth Gay, Aaron M. 

237 



IN MEM OKI AM. 

Powell, Mrs. Cornelia C. Hussey, Anna 
Lukens. M. D., William H. Hussey and Mrs. 
Anna Rice Powell. This committee regarded 
itself as a temporary organization for just 
that service. But it proved quite otherwise. 
The history of the work in England brought 
to light the fact that need for similar work 
existed here. In the following September 
the committee addressed a letter to Mrs. 
Josephine E. Butler, secretary of the British 
and General Federation, in relation to the 
late visit of Mr. W^ilson and Mr. Gledstone ; 
and in reference to the efforts beinof made 
here to introduce the European System of 
Regulation. Brief extracts are given from 
this letter : 

"We improve the occasion of our first meeting, 
as a committee, since the departure of Messrs. 
Wilson and Gledstone, to communicate to you, and 
through you to your philanthropic co-workers, our 
grateful appreciation of the timely and important 
labors of those gentlemen in this and other cities 
of the United States. Their work here has attested 
their eminent fitness for the mission to which they 
were deputed, and their coming was singularly 
opportune. They have inaugurated a movement 

2 '?8 



IN MEM OKI A 31. 

which is destined to extend, and ultimately to 
embrace the whole country, and, we trust, not only 
to prevent the introduction of the license system 
here, but to become auxiliary to its destruction 
wherever it may prevail in other lands. * * * 
Our committee is as yet but ' provisional ' in its 
character, but we trust in due time to win acces- 
sions to our numbers and strength, and to be able 
to co-operate, both heartily and efficiently, as an 
auxiliary of your International Association. A 
chief element of weakness and danger here is the 
over confidence of the many, who have given little 
thought to the subject, and who do not understand 
the stealthy tactics of the license advocates. * * * 
The special danger is in covert and apparently 
innocent measures to carry out ulterior, immoral 
purposes. We shall vigilantly watch and seek 
resolutely to thwart all such evil designs." 

It proved a long labor upon which the 
committee had entered. "To vigilantly 
watch, and to seek resolutely to thwart all 
evil designs" of the legislators, allowed no 
release from their efforts. The need for work 
which they had but dimly guessed in the 
be'Tinnine, became more and more apparent 
with further investigation of the laws. Hav- 
ing "put his hand to the plow," there not only 



239 



IN MEMORIAM. 

was no turning back for my brother, but his 
concern deepened as the years went by. 

One of his most cherished memories was 
of Abby Hopper Gibbons, for many years 
chairman of the New York Committee. Born 
to philanthropic labor, as the daughter of 
Isaac T. Hopper, her life was given to efforts 
for ameliorating the conditions of the poor, 
and of the outcast. My brother had great 
pleasure in Louisa M. Alcott's lively portrait- 
ure of Mrs. Gibbons in the following letter 
after a Christmas day with her at Randall's 
Island, by his arrangement : 

Dec. 25th, 1875, 
Dear Mrs. Powell: 

I have had such an interesting day that I must 
tell you how much I enjoyed it, and regretted that 
you couldn't "go halves." 

The fog did not daunt me, and I found Mrs. G. 
on the boat without any trouble. I lost my heart 
to the dear little lady in five minutes, for she gave 

the Mayor and Commissioner such a splendid 

lecture on pauperism and crime that the important 
gentlemen hadn't a leg to stand upon. j. enjoyed 
it immensely; and the officials appeared no more. 

The poor children welcomed her like the sun; 
and we spent the time in giving out toys and 

240 



IN MEMO RI AM. 

sweeties to the orphans, idiots and babies. It was 
pathetic yet beautiful to see their happiness as the 
friend of thirty years came among them, so moth- 
erly and sweet; and I am sure a sort of halo 
surrounded the little black bonnet as she led us 
from room to room like a Xmas good angel in a 
waterproof. * * * 

Mr. Gibbons was very friendly; and the whole 
trip was a great success, being a different sort of 
day from any I ever spent before, as the only gifts 

I had were those I gave away, and my Xmas dinner 
the one I saw the poor things eat, minus spoons. 

Mrs. G, will meet us at the Tombs next Wed., 

II A. M. Give her name and its all right. Hope 

you can go. Regards to " thy " husband, who I 

trust is better. 

Truly yours, 

L. M. A. 

When at the age of ninety-one Mrs. Gib- 
bons passed away, my brother wrote in The 
Philanthropist : 

"Mrs. Gibbons engaged in the work of our com- 
mittee with great earnestness, and with rare 
wisdom and tact born of large experience. Writing 
to one of her intimate committee associates of some 
new development, indicating the activity of the 
regulation propagandists, she says: ' It bids us be 
vigilant. The advocates of State Regulation 
are more numerous and vile than we supposed.' 

241 



LV MEMORIAM. 

Again she writes: ' If I were a few years younger 
I would meet them face to face at Albany.' In 
response to a suggestion, on one occasion, that in 
the prosecution of our work she be relieved of all 
possible burdens in connection therewith, she 
writes : * Never suggest the word burden in any 
work in which I take so lively an interest. ' Again 
she writes: 'Never fear me, dear friends; keep an 
eye on the work we have undertaken.' Again: 'I 
declare the indifference of those who ought to take 
an interest in this question amazes and vexes me.' 
* * * Great, indeed, is the sense of loss which 
her removal to the world beyond brings to those 
hitherto associated with her in the various phases 
of humane and Christian work to which her life 
was so unreservedly dedicated." 

The first International Congress of the 
British Continental and General Federation 
was held in Geneva, Switzerland, in Septem- 
ber of 1877. He was sent by the New York 
Committee as delegate, Mrs. Julia Ward 
Howe was also present ; and in her account 
of the Congress in the Woman s Journal, 
she mentions that 

"In one of the closing sessions, Aaron M. 
Powell, of New York, made a most interesting 
statement regarding the various attempts hitherto 

242 



IN MEMORIAM. 

made to introduce into the United States, laws 
concerning regulation of vice." 

He himself says in a private letter written 
from Geneva : 

" This Congress {\ am even more impressed than 
before I came) is to mark the beginning of an agi- 
tation which will extend much beyond the question 
merely of repeal and abolition of regulation stat- 
utes and machinery." 

In June of 1883, Mrs. Butler's secretary 
wrote at her request : 

" Mrs. Butler is quite unable to write to express 
her hope that you and Mrs. Powell will be present 
at the meeting at the Hague. She asks me to say 
how anxious she is that you should come, as it is 
especially desirable that there should be some pow- 
erful representative from America." 

This Third International Congress, held at 
the Hague in the following September, my 
brother and his wife attended as delegates, 
and found it an occasion of very great inter- 
est. In a letter to the Woman s Journal at 
this time, he wrote : 



IN MEMORIAM. 

"One is often reminded by it of the kindred 
experiences of American Abolitionists in their 
warfare against slavery. But slavery has disap- 
peared, and the name of Garrison, once so ab- 
horred, is now among the most honored. The 
pioneer in this great crusade for the emancipation 
of the white slave of State sanctioned vice is a 
woman. But this odious form of white slavery for 
the purposes of sexual debauchery is also doomed; 
with the emancipation of these most wronged and 
degraded of women will come a truer liberty for 
all women, an ennobling influence for all men, and 
the names of Mrs. Butler and her effective co- 
workers in this grand conflict, now frequently 
spoken of with derision and contempt, shall in due 
time be enrolled by a grateful people among the 
truest and noblest of the benefactors of mankind. 
The Federation appeals to America for sympathy 
and co-operation. May it not appeal in vain." 

Other International Congresses were at- 
tended, in London 1886, Geneva 1889, Brus- 
sels 1 89 1, London 1894, Berne 1896 and 
again in London 1898. At Berne, and twice 
in London, he was accompanied by his wife. 
With every recurring Congress came such 
earnest appeal from the European workers as 
this from Mrs. Butler : 

*'I write, not only for myself but on behalf of 
244 



IN MEMORIAM. 

our committee, to beg that you will make every 
reasonable effort to be with us, for we feel the 
necessity of having personal communication again 
with our American friends; and you will, I am sure, 
take back with you to New York a wonderful 
impression of the progress of our cause, and of the 
irresistible power with which our principles are 
rolling along and making their way in the midst 
even of other distressing political storms. " 

The attendance of the Congresses in Eng- 
land was ahvays the occasion of more or less 
service in the Temperance cause ; along with 
other study of social conditions. During the 
Coneress of 1886 in London, an evening was 
spent at Toynbee Hall, of which he gives the 
following account in his editorial correspond- 
ence with The Philanthropist : 

" Some of the foreign delegates, one evening 
during the progress of the Congress, were invited 
to dine, and given a reception, at Toynbee Hall, in 
the south of London, in the midst of its overcrowded 
poorer population. It is a practical democratic ex- 
periment, being made mainly by University young 
men, of whom Mr. George Butler is one, to livein 
the midst of these poor people, to fraternize with 
them, to study their condition and needs, and to 
share with them their own advantages of culture, 

245 



7.V MEM OKI AM. 

"Vy inviting them to lectures and conferences on 
a variety of subjects, amusements of various 
types, etc., etc., and thus to neutralize in some 
degree the evil results of the sharply defined class 
distinctions between the rich and cultured and the 
poorer classes of London. Toynbee Hall includes 
lodgings in which the young men reside as a tem- 
porary home, out of business hours, a large dining 
hall, a spacious drawing room, a lecture room, etc. 
The objects and methods of the experiment were 
happily explained by the Rev. Mr. Barnett, who 
presided at the dinner, and congratulatory responses 
were made in behalf of the guests by M. De 
Laveleye and Count Hogendorp, of the Hague. 

Later in the evening two hundred or more of the 
workingmen of the vicinity were present at the 
reception, and in the lecture room were addressed 
by M. De Laveleye and Mr. Powell. The experi- 
ment is one of great interest, with the promise of a 
large measure of usefulness. It is not now, as we 
trust it ultimately may be, conducted upon a total 
abstinence temperance basis." 

On my brother's return from the Brussels 
Congress in 1891, he took the opportunity 
while in London to call upon Archdeacon 
Farrar and Cardinal Manning to ask for 
papers for the World's Temperance Congress 
to be held in Chicago in 1893. Of these 



>46 



IN MEM OKI AM. 

interesting interviews he writes in private 
letters : 

"On Second day I called, with Mr. Raper, on 
Archdeacon Farrar, and we had a delightful inter- 
view with him. He promises, with great cordiality, 
a paper for the World's Temperance Congress, and 
gives me as his topic, which we are at liberty to 
announce, ' The Awakening of the Universal Con- 
science to the Duty of Resisting the Curse of 
Drink. ' This is an exceedingly valuable addition 
to our list." 

And again : 

"Cardinal Manning received us most cordially, 
and will furnish the desired paper — his theme 
'Total Abstinence.' He is well along in the 
eighties, but his eye is bright and his mind very 
clear and quick. When I thanked him for con- 
senting to prepare the paper, he responded — ' I 
shall do it with great joy. ' The interview, which 
covered a wide range of conversation, was one of 
much interest." 

As the work in the anti -slavery cause had 
priceless compensation in intimate association 
with men and women consecrated to unselfish 
work, so his co-operation with the " New 

247 



IN MEMORIAM. 

Abolitionists " had the happy reward of close 
friendship with some of the noblest souls. 
The homes of the Wilsons of Sheffield, the 
Gledstones, and Rapers and Brownes of 
London, the Clarks of Street, the Richardsons 
of York, and the Martineaus of Birmingham 
were hospitably opened to him, and were 
sources of strength and inspiration. In The 
Philanthropist {or October, 1889, he writes 
of an hour with Mrs. Butler who had been 
unable to attend the Coneress in Geneva : 



"Yesterday, the 20th, we journeyed from Lon- 
don to the quiet, beautiful old Cathedral town of 
Winchester, and had an hour with Canon and Mrs. 
Butler. Canon Butler is very feeble, but cherishes 
the faith that presently his strength will be again 
renewed. Serene in spirit, with good cheer, his 
presence was a benediction. Mrs. Butler seemed 
very frail in body, and though worn with the 
prolonged period of nursing and care of her beloved 
husband, which she can delegate to no one else, 
she is keenly alive to the interest to which her 
life has been so largely dedicated, and had watched 
from her quiet seclusion at the Close, the proceed- 
ings of the Congress at Geneva, of which she had 
been kept fully advised. Both Canon and Mrs. 
Butler spoke with much appreciation of the message 

248 



IN MEMORIAM. 

of sympathetic remembrance telegraphed to them 
from Geneva, while the Congress was in session. 
Mrs. Butler's analysis of the difficulties to be en- 
countered in the prosecution of the work of the 
Federation in the different countries, and of the 
personnel of the workers, was characteristic, and 
such as she alone can give. She is not unmindful 
of America, and views with apprehension, as do 
we, the tolerated vice of our large cities, with the 
ominous tendency towards corrupt municipal taxa- 
tion, as in Omaha and Minneapolis. This hour at 
the Close, of which we may not properly speak in 
detail, we shall cherish gratefully as a memorable 
feature of our brief visit in England." 

Valued friendships there were, too, on the 
Continent, with Mme. Klerck and Count 
and Countess Hogendorp of the Hague, and 
other friends in Switzerland. 

Bits of travel were among the compensa- 
tions of these missions abroad. An extract 
from his editorial correspondence of 1896 
gives a glimpse of his great enjoyment of that 
last journeying in Switzerland : 

" Berne, Switzerland, September 19, 1896. 

"Once more we are in Switzerland. This is 
our fourth visit to this rarely beautiful mountam 
country The first was as a tourist, after attend- 
ance, as an American delegate, at the first 

249 



IN MEMORIAM. 

International Prison Congress, held in London in 
1872; the second, as a representative of the New 
York Committee for the Prevention of State 
Regulation of Vice, at the first International Con- 
gress for the Abolition of State Regulation of 
Vice, at which the International Federation was 
organized, held in Geneva in 1877; and the third, 
at a second Congress, held tinder the auspices of 
the Federation, in Geneva, at the close of its first 
decade, in 1887. * * * 

"We left Paris early on the morning of the 7th, 
for the day trip through Northern France, via 
Belfort, arriving at Basle, in Switzerland, early in 
the evening, and spending the night at the Hotel 
Trois Rois (the Three Kings), on the banks of the 
Rhine. After visiting a few points of interest in 
Basle on the morning of the 8th, we journeyed to 
Lucerne, via Olten, a very old and picturesque 
Swiss city. Our first view of the snow capped 
mountains from Lucerne was most refreshing, 
with a vivid memory of the prolonged, intense and 
perilous heat through which we had so recently 
passed in New York ! To improve the prevailing 
pleasant weather for a mountain ascent we left 
Lucerne on the morning of the 9th for a day and 
a night on the Rigi, and were greatly favored to 
have the most enjoyable atmospheric conditions, 
a not entirely clear sunset view, but a sunrise rare 
and glorious quite beyond description ! Returning 
from the high mountain, about six thousand feet 
above the sea level, with its magnificent views of 
the neighboring still higher Alpine peaks, and of 

250 



IN MEMORIAM. 

the valleys and lakes below, we made a delightful 
steamer excursion over the Lake of the Four Can- 
tons to Fluelen and back again to Lucerne. From 
Lucerne we journeyed by rail over the Brunig 
pass, and by steamer over Lake Brienz to Inter- 
laken. Modern railroad engineering, wonderfully 
exemplified by the Rigi, the Brunig, and the Ber- 
nese Oberland Railways, over the Wengernalp, has 
made possible latterly the enjoyment of this grand- 
est of mountain scenery by multitudes with a 
minimum of fatigue, exposure and cost as compared 
with former times. The excursion which we made 
from Interlaken on the 12th inst., a day of a 
thousand for it, via Lauterbrunnen over the Wen- 
gernalp to Scheidegg, the summit, above the snow 
Tine of the Jungfrau, the Eiger, the Monch, and 
the Wetterhorn, to Grindelwald and return, was, 
indeed, one long to be remembered! While we 
were enjoying greatly the refreshing, invigorating 
upper air at Scheidegg, thousands of feet above 
Interlaken, we had the pleasant surprise of meeting 
Prof. James Stuart, M. P., Honorary Secretary of 
our International Federation, who was also en route 
with Mrs. Stuart to attend the Berne Conference. 
After two days of quiet and most grateful rest at 
Interlaken, the heart of this wonderful mountain 
region, an added journey of two hours and a half, 
also a most interesting and pleasant one by rail, 
part of the way along the beautiful Lake of Thun, 
brought us safely to Berne, for the International 
Conference which, representing the American 
Purity Alliance, we came to attend." 



IN MEMORIAM. 

Once more, and for the last time, he crossed 
the Atlantic, to attend the Congress of 1898 
in London, an occasion of very great import- 
ance, in the effort to check the reactionary 
tendency toward restoring the Regulation 
System in India. The Shield (London) in 
its report of the proceedings of the Congress, 
says : 

''Aaron M. Powell rejoiced that in America as 
in England the advocates of State regulation of 
fice were becoming more conscious of the inherent 
sinfulness of the system. * * * 

" He most earnestly begged the English people 
not to set America and the world the bad example 
of re-enacting a system of State recognition and 
regulation of vice which on all grounds had been 
tested, discredited and rejected. * * * 

"It was said that the position of women in a 
country was the measure of the civilization of that 
country; and he would like to say how his heart 
had been gladdened in this Congress as in no 
previous ones to the same degree, by the presence 
and co-operation of women from the Continent 
who had added so much to the proceedings. He 
recalled the first great Congress held in Geneva in 
1S77, when Eliza Wigham, Mrs. Butler, and Julia 
Ward Howe spoke for the first time that women's 
voices had been heard in that city; and it might 

252 



IN MEM OKI AM. 

now seem like a dream as they gazed on the 
enormous progress made since that time. The 
voice of Countess Von Hogendorp recalled also 
very many and pleasant recollections of the work 
of women at the Congress at the Hague; and Mrs. 
Butler was, happily, among them still, though not 
able to do much in public speaking. It was a 
mark of progress that this movement which in- 
volved so much for humanity should be so markedly 
carried on by men and women working together 
as God's children, blessed by His helpful influence 
and guidance." 

Beside this address as delegate represent- 
ing the American Purity Alliance, he shared 
in the public meeting of the National Vigil- 
ance Association of which the Duke of 
Westminster is president; and again spoke 
briefly in the great public meeting of the 
Ladies' National Association held in historic 
Exeter Hall, presided over by Mrs. Butler 
assisted by Prof. Stuart, M. P. It was a 
memorable scene when, at the close of the 
meeting, a vote of thanks for Mrs. Butler 
having been moved, the vast audience rose ; 
and amid profound silence, that no syllable be 
lost, of the revered but now enfeebled voice, 



253 



IN MEMO RI AM. 

Mrs. Butler renewed her pledge of faithfulness 
in these words : 

"I cannot make a speech now in Exeter Hall; I 
am too old. I will only say one thing: in the name 
and in the strength of our God I promise and vow 
to the people of England to be faithful unto death 
in this mission to which God has called me, for the 
preservation of their dearest liberties and of their 
holiest aspirations. I thank you, dear friends." 

The labors of this Congress were followed 
by several weeks of restful enjoyment of the 
beauties of England, shared by his wife and 
sister. It was plain to see that there must 
be care not to overtask his physical strength; 
but this was not allowed to shadow the quiet 
joys of this season of recreation. On leaving 
London for the North, a pause was made in 
the beautiful university town of Oxford. The 
delightful pilgrimage to the lake country was 
broken by visits to the hospitable homes of 
Mr. and Mrs. Wilson of Sheffield, and the 
Grahams of Dalton Hall at Manchester. The 
month amid the Lakes in " Wordsworth- 
shire " had, among its satisfactions, cordial 

254 



IN MEMORIAM. 

intercourse with Canon and Mrs. Rawnsley 
of Keswick; a "red-letter" day with the 
"George School Party" under conduct of 
Jesse H. Holmes ; several days with Charles 
Thompson in his rural home at Morland ; and 
" afternoon tea" with Mr. and Mrs. William 
H. Hills and their daughter in their lovely 
"Nook" on Windermere. The last night in 
the Lake District was spent upon its very 
edge, in Swarthmoor Hall, so vitally associated 
with Margaret Fell and George Fox. Then 
the return journe)' to London was made 
memorable, not only by glimpses of old 
Chester and the mountains and sforofes of 
Wales, but by heart warming welcome to the 
home of William Edward and Anne Turner 
in Colwyn Bay ; and again, to the sweet 
hospitality of Mary Radley of Warwick. 

The benefit, health wise, of this summer in 
England, away from the perilous heat of a 
city office, and at leisure among scenes of 
indescribable beauty, was seen during the 
winter that followed. But to the keen sight 



255 



IN MEMORIAM. 

of love it was apparent that there was a gradual 
decline of strenofth. 

The demands of the Social Purity cause 
constantly increased, and my brother's work 
in this field was done, for the most part, in 
addition to his reofular en^aofements. The 
issue o{ Bulletins began in April 1879 and 
was continued until January 1886, when the 
first number of The Philanthropist was sent 
out as a monthly. The arrangements for the 
World's Purity Congress held in Chicago in 
1893 involved very extensive correspondence, 
and the charge of numberless details. 

In 1895 the name of the New York Com- 
mittee for the Prevention of the State 
Regulation of Vice was changed to the 
American Purity Alliance, and the scope of 
work and membership somewhat extended. 
A National Purity Congress, continuing three 
days, was held in Baltimore during October 
of that year. The representative character 
and high moral tone of this Congress, fully 
justified the heavy responsibility and great 
labor involved in brinorinor it to a successful 

256 



IN MEMORIAM. 

issue. So great was the interest awakened 
by this Congress, it was decided to hold 
three supplementary Conferences ; the first 
in Philadelphia in November ; the second in 
Boston in December ; and the third in New 
York in January of 1896. Aided by the 
kindest co-operation of interested workers in 
each of these cities, the success of the Confer- 
ences was most gratifying to my brother. 
These were followed by the publication, at 
the cost of great labor, of "The National 
Purity Congress : Its Papers, Addresses and 
Portraits " — a volume which might be char- 
acterized as a library upon this subject. 
Those who knew him well will read his life 
motive and inspiration in the Dedication of 
this volume : 



" To our beloved daughter, in the life beyond, 
the memory of whose lovely childhood has been a 
continual inspiration during years of effort to secure 
improved social conditions and more adequate pro- 
tection for exposed young girls, the daughters of 
others, and to promote an equal standard of mo- 
rality for both men and women, this volume is 
affectionately dedicated." 

257 



IN ME MORI AM. 

For nearly a quarter of a century my 
brother has used voice and pen in behalf of 
this cause which touches the very fountains 
of individual character and of national life. 
In a few closing- words at the Boston Confer- 
ence, he said : 

"Let us keep constantly a high ideal. We 
believe in God, and we know that with God all 
things are possible; and in the spiritual resources 
of the universe there is an answer for every need." 

It was in this faith that he labored. It is 
to the sons and daughters of his soul, up and 
down the land, that we must look for pens 
and voices to carry on his unfinished work ! 

When the word reached his long time 
friend and co-worker Henry J. Wilson, of his 
sudden passing to the " larger life " as his 
own favorite phrase was, Mr. Wilson wrote 
from Sheffield : 

"What can I say ! Oh I am so sorry for you, for 
our cause, for myself! It is twenty-three years 
since Mr. Gledstone and I were in the States, 
advised, guided, helped and encouraged by your 
husband, and ever since he has been doing the 

258 



IN MEMORIAM. 

same thing for me, — advising, guiding, helping 
and encouraging, — a most delightful man to co- 
operate with, a tower of strength to our cause, as 
to all causes. 

And now he is gone, and I feel a tremendous 
blank!" 

If we look for a key to this life of cheerful, 
unwearying labor, perhaps it may be found 
in his own closing words at the Boston 
Conference. He believed in God, and he 
had found out the life-sustaining secret that 
" in the spiritual resources of the universe 
there is an answer for every need." The 
faith of his fathers, in the indwelling God, 
the direct personal relation possible to every 
soul with the All-Father, was his not only as 
a birthright but through obedience and faith- 
fulness had become a vital faith. Every 
morning there was a fresh, albeit a silent 
acknowledgment of this relation to the 
Divine. Thus was he fortified for what the 
day might bring of hard work or of perplexing 
difficulties. And never letting go his hold 
upon Infinite Love and Infinite Strength, 
grace was given him to shine away many 

259 



IN MEMORIAM. 

dark places, and to pass serenely through the 
difficult ones. Believing that the Everlasting 
Arms were underneath him, he did not require 
to see every step of the path before him, but 
calmly went his way with no dread of the 
momentary darkness that may be the passage- 
way to unending day. 

** Life, Death and Immortality 
Were in his thought of God!" 

Elizabeth Powell Boxd. 



260 



TO ONE ARISEN. 



In Mcjnory of Aaron M. Powell. 



O Friend beloved ! So loving, brave and true ! 

So loyal ever to the Spirit's light! 

Who followed duty through the darkest night, 
And what thou dared to dream of, dared to do ! 
How blest wast thou through all thy journey here; 

How blest in that swift, voiceless call, that came 

Like God's own Angel, to bid thee in His name 
To come to higher service. His holy presence near. 
We loved thy gracious spirit, and now we know. 

Since thou hast been translated, that thou hast 
gone 

Away from us but for a little space: 
And He who led thee here and blessed thee so 

We trust will lead us to that Heavenly dawn 
Where we shall hear thy voice and meet thee face 

to face. 

Isaac Roberts. 



261 



AARON M. POWELL AS A 
RELIGLOUS TEACHER. 



Whatever other appellation be given to 
Aaron M. Powell, none could more fully and 
accurately define his character than that of a 
Religious Teacher. He was a faithful and 
consistent member of the Religious Society 
of Friends, to which his family have belonged 
as far back as his ancestry has been traced. 
His membership was with the Stanford 
Quarterly Meeting, N. Y., until his removal 
to Plainfield, New Jersey. He grew up in a 
silent meeting, except for the occasional visits 
of his uncle, Aaron C. Macy, of Hudson, and 
other ministering Friends. He was quite 
3'oung when his interest was aroused in the 
great work of the liberation of the slaves of 
our country, by the earnest labors of William 
Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Parker 
Pillsbury, Charles C. Burleigh, Lucretia Mott, 

262 



IN MEMORIAM. 

Stephen and Abby Foster, and the other 
early AboHtionists. Before he was of age he 
pubHcly joined their ranks, and in the anti- 
slavery work, in which those of various relig- 
ious denominations were unitedly engaged 
he was prepared for a broader and more 
comprehensive labor than that of a religious 
teacher whose efforts were to be confined 
within the narrower limits of any one religi- 
ous organization. It is this fact which makes 
it proper to refer to it in this consideration 
of his life as a Religious Teacher. As time 
passed, and to his anti-slavery labors was 
added an active interest in the various causes 
of reform,— Temperance, Peace, Equal Rights 
for Women, and Social Purity ,-he has been 
constantly ripening, sweetening and broaden- 
ino- for the important Religious service of his 
latter years. He has well learned and zeal- 
ously and impressively taught the great 
truth that moral reforms are religious in their 
character, that morality and religion cannot 
be divorced without serious injury to both ; 
that, in short, in the simple and expressive 

263 



IN MEMO RI AM. 

language of Matthew Arnold, " Religion is 
morality touched with emotion." He would 
thus irrevocably bind together the first and 
second commandments of our Divine Master, 
the Love of God, and the Love of our fellow 
men, and make them both livino^ command- 
ments for practical observance every day^ 
This important truth, of which the world 
stands so much in need, by his clear and 
earnest public utterances, and his gentle and 
winninof manner, he has seemed to be one 
especially commissioned to teach, not alone 
to any one religious organization, neither his 
own nor any other, but to the world at large. 
And he thus furnishes one more distinguished 
example of the truth of Lowell's words, now 
more and more generally accepted, but seem- 
ingly more prophetic than descriptive of 
general belief at the time they were uttered : 

" God sends his teachers unto every age. 
To every clime and every race of men, 
With revelations fitted for their need." 

Thus has he been providentially prepared, 

264 



IN MEMORIAM. 

through a long course of thought and train- 
ing, to become a truly religious teacher, in 
the best and fullest modern sense, to the 
world in creneral, recrardless of all narrow 
sectarian distinctions, and in an especial man- 
ner to the Religious Society of his birth and 
choice. But he never waited to espouse a 
cause until it became popular ; and there 
were long years during which the views which 
he promulgated on reformatory subjects were 
not acceptable to all ; and even after he was 
received as a valuable and impressive teacher 
of truths important to the world by those 
outside of his own religious society, he was 
not yet made wholly welcome by many hav- 
ing influence and authority within its limits. 
Thus was he, for a time, a modern example 
of the words of our Divine Master : — " A 
prophet is not without honor save in his own 
country, and among his own kin." But his 
time was coming, and how we all rejoice to- 
day that he lived to see the change. 

A growing uneasiness in the Society, 
especially among the younger members, with 

265 



IN MEMORIAM. 

the conservative position maintained upon 
questions of practical interest to humanit)-, 
led to outside organizations amonof them of 
different kinds, which at lenofth be^an to find 
general and somewhat national expression in 
conferences of members of the various Yearly 
Meetings, a movement originating largely with 
Jonathan W. Plummer, of Illinois. These 
conferences at first included the First day 
schools, and a little later, the Philanthropic 
Associations; and at length, in 1894, at 
Chappaqua, New York, a third was added, 
called distinctively a Religious Conference. 
This conference, as already intimated in \s^<. 
reference to Matthew Arnold, was intended 
to emphasize more fully the union of the 
emotional with the moral, thus transforming 
what might be cold and calculating morality 
into relicrion. Of this, our first g-eneral Re- 
ligious Conference, Aaron M. Powell was, by 
universal approval, made the chairman ; and 
no one present during the sessions of that 
remarkable conference at Chappaqua failed, 
I am sure, to be most deeply impressed by the 

266 



IN AT EM OKI AM. 

profoundly religious character of its sessions, 
and its solemn close under the wise, well 
directed and gentle management of its spirit- 
ually minded chairman. I am quite sure that 
many Friends count that meeting in '94 as a 
period of a new religious awakening to them 
individually, and it has been such throughout 
the limits of the Society. What is here said 
of the Chappaqua Conference, may be said 
with equal truth of the two conferences since 
held, that at Swarthmore in '96, and at 
Richmond, Indiana, in '98. Both of these 
Religious Conferences were held under the 
wise and able direction of the same chairman 
who had, at Chappaqua, proven himself the 
man divinely appointed for the important 
place. 

Thus has the great importance of his work 
for the Society, though tardily acknowledged 
through mistaken conservative influences in 
the earlier years, been fully and publicly 
acknowledged in the end, and the whole 
Society, like a truly bereaved family, is in 
mourning from one end of the country to the 

267 



IN MEMO RI AM. 

other, and even beyond the sea, for his un- 
timely loss, at a period when, seemingly, his 
labors were more needed and more important 
than ever before. But who will presume to 
decide that question ? May not all feel, and 
in an especial manner the young, who have 
been so deeply impressed by his pure spiritual 
influence, that his sudden loss, at such a time, 
in the very midst of his labors, may really be, 
in its influence upon the survivors, the crown- 
ing sheaf of his glorious labors for society, 
making them even better known, and adding 
to their great influence for good ? Vainly do 
we ask, who shall be his successor ? Great 
leaders in the world are unipersonal, they 
have no successors ; although others arise to 
do, or partially do their work, but in a difler- 
ent way. 

" Gone before us, oh our brother, 
To the spirit land, 
Vainly look we for another, 
In thy place to stand." 

Edward H. Magill. 
Swarthmore College, Pa. 

268 



IN MEM OR Y OF AARON MA CY PO WELL. 



Obiit May, i8gg. 



Men have a life to live, a death to die 
Daily for life according to God's word I 
And unto some the Angel of the Lord 

Comes at his hour, they rise without a sigh, 

And pass the gates of this mortality, 

To where for welcoming with sweet accord 
The fair forms stand so long from far adored, 

Freedom and Temperance, Peace and Purity. 

And thou hast risen and gone the silent way 
Dear friend ! whose hand — albeit it left the plow 

For fields of barren discord, bitter scorn — 
Sowed seeds of love we gather here and now. 
Thou too hast passed the doors of wider day 
But left our greater darkness less forlorn. 

H. D. Rawnsley. 
Keswick, England. 



J69 



NOT CREED, BUT CHARACTER. 



GROUNDS OF SYMPATHY AND FRATERNITY 
AMONG RELIGIOUS MEN AND WOMEN. 



By AARON M. POWELL. 

It is in behalf of one of the smaller religious 
bodies, the Society of Friends, that I am invited to 
speak to you. In the time allotted it would be 
quite impossible to cover exhaustively the whole 
field of my broad subject, " The Grounds of Sym- 
pathy and Fraternity Among Religious Men." 

It is altogether natural and proper that in form 
and method and ritual there should be diversity, 
great diversity, among the peoples interested in 
religion throughout the world; but it is also possi- 
ble, as it is extremely desirable, that there should 
be unity, fraternity and co-operation in the pro- 
mulgation of simple spiritual truth. To illustrate 
my thought I may say that not very long ago I 
went to one of the great Salvation Army meetings 
in New York with two of my personal friends, who 
were also members of the Society of Friends. It 



'An address before the Religious Con>^ress for Friends 
in the World's Parliament of Religions held in Chicago in 
1893. 

270 



IN MEMORIAM. 

was one of those meetings full of enthusiasm with 
volleys innumerable, and we met that gifted and 
eloquent Queen of the Army, Mrs. Ballington 
Booth, to whom I had the pleasure of introducing 
my two Quaker friends. Taking in the humor of 
the situation, she said: "Yes, we have much in 
common ; you add a little quiet and we add a little 
noise." 

The much in common between these two very 
different peoples, the noisy Salvationists and the 
quiet Quakers, is in the application of admitted 
Christian truth to human needs. It is along that 
line that my thought must lead this morning with 
regard to unity and fraternity among religious men 
and religious women. Every people on the face 
of the earth has some conception of the Supreme 
and the Infinite. It is common to all classes, all 
races, all nationalities ; but the Christian ideal, 
according to my own conception, is the highest and 
most complete ideal of all. It embraces most fully 
the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of 
mankind. 

Justice and mercy and love it maintains as due 
from each to all. There are no races, there are 
no territorial limitations or exceptions. Even the 
most untutored have always been found to be 
amenable to the presentation of this fundamental 
Christian thought exemplified in a really Christian 
life. Here I may illustrate by the experience of 
William Penn among the Indians of North America. 
He came to them as their brother and as their 
friend, to exemplify the principles of justice and 

271 



IN MEMORIA M. 

truth. It is a matter of history that the relations 
between Penn and the Quakers and the Indians 
have been exceptional and harmonious, on the 
basis of this ideal brotherhood of man. Alas, that 
all the Indians in America might not have had 
representatives of this Quaker humane thought to 
deal with ! What a different page would have been 
written in American history ! 

Many years later another Friend was sent out 
under President Grant's administration to labor as 
a superintendent among the Indians, the noble 
hearted, true Quaker, Samuel M. Janney. As he 
went among the Indians committed to his charge, 
he not only undertook to deal with them with ref- 
erence to their material interests, but he also sought 
to labor among them as their friend, and in a certain 
sense as a religious helper and teacher. Pie talked 
with those Indians in Nebraska about spiritual 
things. They could understand about the Great 
Spirit as they listened to him, and he told them 
furthermore, the wonderful story of Jesus of Naz- 
areth, commending His teaching and the lesson of 
His life and His death to them. They listened, 
with regard to the Son, as they had with reverence 
to the Father, but he could not impress them, in 
the face of their sad experience with a so called 
Christian nation, with the virtues of the Son, 

Finally one old chief said to him : ' ' We know 
about the Father, but the Son has not been along 
this way yet. " 

I do not wonder, in the light of the record which 
this so called Christian nation had made in dealing 



272 



IN MEMORIAM. 

with those Indians, that they thought that they 
had never seen the Son out that way yet. It is, 
alas, to our shame, as a people, that it must be said 
as a matter of historic truth, that the very reverse 
of the Christian spirit has been the spirit shown in 
dealing with the Indians, who have been treated 
with bad faith and untold cruelty. 

A fresh and living instance of this spirit is illus- 
trated in the chapter we are now writing so 
shamefully in our dealings with the Chinese. We 
are sending missionaries abroad to China, but what 
are we teaching by example in America with ref- 
erence to the Chinese except the Godless doctrine 
that they have no rights which we are bound to 
respect ? We are receiving lessons, valuable and 
varied, from these distinguished representatives of 
other religions, but what are we to say in their 
presence of our shortcomings, measured by the 
standard of our high Christian ideal, which recog- 
nizes the brotherhood of all mankind and God as 
the common Father ? 

I want to say that the potential religious life — 
and it is a lesson which is being emphasized day 
by day by this wonderful parliament — is not a 
creed, but character. It is for this message that 
the waiting multitude listens. We have many 
evidences of this. Among the recent deaths on 
this side of the Atlantic which awaken world-wide 
echoes of lamentation and regret, there has been 
no one so missed and so mourned as a religious 
teacher in this century as Phillips Brooks. 

One thing above all else which characterized the 

273 



IN MEMO KI AM. 

ministry of Phillips Brooks was his interpretation 
of spiritual power in the life of the individual 
human soul. The one poet who has voiced this 
thought most widely in our own and in other 
countries, whose words are to be found in the 
afterpart of the general program of this parlia- 
ment, is the Quaker poet, Whittier. His words 
are adapted to world wide use by all who enter 
into the spirit of Christianity in its utmost simpli- 
city. In seeking the grounds of fraternity and 
co-operation, we must not look in the region of 
forms and ceremonies and rituals, wherein we may 
all very properly differ, and agree to differ, as we 
are doing here, but we must seek them especially 
in the direction of unity and action for the removal 
of the world's great evils. 

I believe we stand to-day at the dividing of the 
ways, and whether or not there shall follow this 
parliament of religions any permanent committee, 
or any general organization, looking to the crea- 
tion of a universal church, I do hope that one 
outcome of this great commingling will be some 
sort of action between the peoples of the different 
religions, looking to the removal of the great evils 
which stand in the pathway of the progress of all 
true religion. 

Part of my speech has been made this morning 
by the eloquent ex-governor who preceded me, 
but I will emphasize his remarks with regard to 
arbitration. There were two illustrations of my 
thought to which he did not make specific refer- 
ence. One is recent in the Behring Sea arbitration. 

274 



IN MEMORIAM. 

What a blessing that is as compared with the old 
fashioned method of settling the differences between 
this country and Great Britain by going to war. 
We may rejoice and take courage in this fresh 
illustration of the practicability of arbitration be- 
tween two great and powerful nations. 

I may cite also one other illustration, the Geneva 
award, which at the time it occurred was perhaps 
even more remarkable than the more recent arbi- 
tration of the Behring Sea dispute. Among the 
exhibits down yonder at the White city, which you 
doubtless have seen, is the great Krupp gun. It 
is a marvellous piece of inventive ingenuity. It is 
absolutely appalling in its possibilities for the de- 
struction of humanity. Now, if the religious 
people of the world, whatever their name or form, 
will unite in a general league against war and 
resolve to arbitrate all difficulties, I believe that 
that great Krupp gun will, if not preserved for 
some museum, be literally melted and recast into 
plowshares and pruning hooks. 

This parliament has laid very broad foundations. 
It is presenting an object lesson of immense value. 
In June I had the privilege of assisting here in 
another world's congress, wherein were represen- 
tatives of various nationalities and countries. We 
had on the platform the distinguished archbishop 
of St. Paul, that great liberal Catholic. Archbishop 
Ireland, Sitting near him was Father Cleary, his 
neighbor and friend — another noble man. Sitting 
near those two Catholics was Adjutant Vickery, of 
the Salvation Army, the representative of Mrs. 

275 



IN MEMORIAM. 

Ballington Booth, who was unable through sickness 
to be present. Near these there were several 
members of the Society of Friends, and along with 
them were some Episcopalians, Methodists, Bap- 
tists, Presbyterians and one Unitarian whose face 
I see here to-day. All these were tremendously 
in earnest to strike a blow at one of the great 
obstacles to the progress of Christian life in 
Europe — state regulated vice. 

I cannot deal in detail with that subject now, but 
I may say that it is the most infamous system of 
slavery of womanhood and girlhood the world has 
ever seen. It exists in most European countries 
and it has its champions in America, who have been 
seeking, by their propagandism, to fasten it upon 
our large cities. It is one of the most vital ques- 
tions of this era, and it should be the care and 
responsibility of religious people everywhere to 
see that as speedily as possible this great shame 
shall be wiped away from modern civilization. 

Let me tell you an incident that occurred in 
Geneva, Switzerland, three or four years ago. 
There jumped out of a four-story window down to 
the court below a beautiful young girl. Marvelously 
her life was spared. A noble Christian woman, 
whom I count it a privilege to number among my 
personal friends, went to this poor girl's side and 
got her story. In substance it was this: 

She had been sold for a price in Berlin to one of 
the brothel keepers of Geneva, and, as his property, 
had been imprisoned in that brothel, and was held 
therein as a prisoner and slave. She endured it as 

276 



IN MEMORIAM. 

long as she could, and finally, as she told this friend 
of mine, " When I thought of God I could endure 
it no longer and I resolved to take the chances of 
my life for escape, " and she made that fearful leap, 
and providentially her life was spared. What must 
be the nature of the oppression that will thus drive 
its victims to the despei^ate straits of this young 
girl ? It is a slavery worse than the chattelism, in 
some of its details, which formerly prevailed in our 
own country. 

Now, what has America to do on this line ? 
America has a fearful responsibility. Though it 
may not have the actual system of state regulation, 
we call oiirselves a Christian country, and yet, in 
this beloved America of ours, in more than one 
state, under the operation of the laws called "age 
of consent," a young girl of ten years is held capa- 
ble of consenting to her own ruin. Shame, indeed ; 
it is a shame; a tenfold shame. I appeal, in pass- 
ing, for league and unity among religious people 
for the overthrow of this system in European 
countries, and the rescue and redemption of our 
own land from this gigantic evil which threatens 
us here. 

I now pass to another overshadowing evil, the 
ever pressing drink evil. There was another con- 
gress held here in June; it was to deal with the vice 
of intemperance. I had the privilege of looking 
over forty consular reports prepared at the request 
of the late Secretary of State, Mr. Blaine. In every 
one of these reports intemperance was shown to be 
a producing cause of a large part of the vice, immo- 

277 



IN MEM OKI AM. 

rality and crime in those countries. There is need 
of an alliance on the part of religious people for the 
removal of this great evil which stands in the path- 
way of practical Christian progress. 

Now, another thought in a different direction. 
What the world greatly needs to-day in all countries 
is greater simplicity in connection with the religious 
life and propagandism. The Society of Friends, in 
whose behalf I appear before you, may fairly claim 
to have been teachers by example in that direction. 
We want to banish the spirit of worldliness from 
every land, which has taken possession of many 
churches, and inaugurate an era of greater sim- 
plicity. 

The actual progress of Christianity in accordance 
with its ideal may be stated, in a sentence, to be 
measured by the position of women in all lands. 
The Society of Friends furnished pioneers in the 
prisons of Old England and of New England in 
the direction of Divinely inspired womanhood. 
We believe there is still urgent need of an enlarge- 
ment of this sphere to woman, and we ought to 
liave it preached more widely everywhere. There 
should be leagues and alliances to help bring about 
this needed change. The individual stands alone, 
unaided, comparatively powerless ; but in organiza- 
tion there is great power, and in the fullness of the 
life of the spirit, applied through organization, it is 
possible to transform the world for its benefit in 
many directions. 

Some one has described heaven as being simply 
a harmonious relationship between God and man. 

278 



I 



IN MEMORIAM, 

If that be a true description of the heavenly con- 
dition, we need not wait until we pass beyond the 
river to experience something of the uplift of the 
joy of salvation. Let us band together, religious 
men and women of all names and nationalities, to 
bring about this greater harmony between one 
another and with God, the Father of us all. 
Then, finally, in all lands and in every soul, to the 
lowliest as well as the highest, may this more and 
more become the joyous refrain of each, "Nearer, 
my God, to Thee; Nearer to Thee." 



279 



t^OV 20 1899 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 899 671 9 



